Facebook and Instagram launch new product updates to help more businesses drive sales

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Screen Shot 2016-05-11 at 8.44.42 am.jpgRight now a single trend is completely reshaping how people discover products, information and experiences: people are spending more time on mobile and in apps.

And being on mobile has influenced how people discover, browse and purchase. In the US, for example, people are spending the majority ( 54%) of their time on mobile in mobile apps. Sixty percent of people on Instagram say they discover new products on the platform, while 75% say they’ve taken action after being inspired by a post. Plus, during the 2015 holiday season, nearly 1 in 5 purchases was on mobile, and  it’s predicted that  this year more than half of people who research travel online will do so on a mobile device.

As people discover information, products and experiences in this fashion, advertising strategies have to change to keep up. Businesses need to understand the new ways people are showing interest in a product. And, using that information, they can offer highly-relevant messages to people where they are spending their time: in their favourite mobile apps.

To help businesses do just that, today Facebook is announcing a variety of product updates to its Facebook, Instagram and the Audience Network to give advertisers new ways to drive sales of its products in more places across mobile and desktop. Facebook is expanding functionality for Dynamic Ads (formerly called Dynamic Product Ads) and adding new advanced capability to Custom Audiences from websites. These updates help advertisers identify and connect with their most valuable website visitors and mobile app users. They also reflect Facebook’s commitment to make Facebook, Instagram and the Audience Network the most effective platforms for driving  sales on mobile.

Dynamic Ads for Instagram

Relevance is key in any marketing campaign, but as retail and ecommerce businesses look for better ways to connect  with shoppers on mobile, there’s a huge opportunity to offer highly-relevant messages to the people who are browsing  and shopping on websites and in mobile  apps. To help marketers connect  with shoppers  in new places, today Facebook is extending a product to Instagram that many Facebook advertisers are already using with great success:  Dynamic Ads.

Dynamic Ads automate product advertising by showing people ads featuring items they’ve ex-pressed interest in–either by viewing it or adding it to their cart–or items related to ones they’ve shown interest in or purchased. And now businesses using Dynamic Ads can easily connect with more potential customers on mobile.

To date, more than 2.5 billion unique products have been uploaded to Facebook. Now, by extending Dynamic Ads to Instagram, advertisers can promote relevant products to shoppers who have browsed their website or mobile app across two platforms where people spend much of their time–Facebook and Instagram. While many advertisers already use Instagram to promote their products, manually tailoring ad creative and targeting for every product in their catalogue is time consuming. Now with Dynamic Ads, advertisers can showcase every one of their products automatically with dynamic creative and targeting, so they can show the right product to the right person every time.

After seeing success with Dynamic Ads on Facebook, Canada-based jewellery retailer, Jewlr, was one of the first businesses to try Dynamic Ads on Instagram. Their campaign targeted people in the US who viewed or added a product to their cart from the Jewlr website, but hadn’t followed through with a purchase. So far, Jewlr is seeing strong results with their Dynamic Ads on Instagram; with a return on ad spend exceeding 3X.

To run Dynamic Ads across all of Facebook’s placements, simply select Instagram and  Audience Network under “Placement” when creating your Dynamic Ad.

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