Facebook’s newest toy for marketers seizes on video’s momentum among consumers with a pitch to help brands stick out from the crowd.
Collection, which rolls out worldwide today, allows marketers to place a video ad or picture above product images available for sale. The point is to make a traditional page a consumer might peruse for product look more in line with what people tend to use their mobile phones for: watching videos and discovering. Tapping on the ad routes a consumer to Facebook where customers can shop as many as 50 items at a time. Each item has its own product page for pricing, reviews or the ability to purchase.
Adidas was one company that tested the new ad format for its Z.N.E. Road Trip hoodie among other related products and reported a 5.3 times return on its advertising spend.
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Rebecca Watts, Adidas performance marketing senior specialist, said the new functionality has “outstanding cross-selling capabilities, and we’ll certainly explore this new format again to inspire and increase sales.”
Tommy Hilfiger tapped Facebook’s collection to make his fall 2016 fashion show shoppable, with the company reporting a 2.2 times return on its ad spend.
“Collection creates a consumer experience that reflects how current generations of digital natives interact with their favorite brands,” said Tommy Hilfiger chief brand officer Avery Baker.
That’s the point: to make advertising not look like advertising and grab the attention of consumers. Collection mirrors the rise in popularity of video and the shift among consumers and now marketers to the format. It’s also a way of addressing any potential leakage out among marketers who might look to Snap Inc.’s Snapchat video ads as an alternative way of reaching consumers.
Facebook said it is now turning its attention to studying outbound clicks across all of its ad products so that it can eventually show marketers a fuller picture of where people are going after clicking out of Facebook. That analysis will also include metrics on people clicking out of Facebook’s Instagram if a company also has ads on the photo- and video-sharing app.
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