Facebook announced the launch of new product ads that allow retailers to promote multiple products of their entire product catalog, across all devices customers use.
With product ads, retailers can showcase more products on Facebook and customers can discover more relevant products, according to a press release.
Link Walls, VP of Product management for ChannelAdvisor, said that while retailers could advertise on Facebook before, what was lacking was doing it to scale.
Product ads offer businesses a number of ways to highlight different products on Facebook. Retailers can upload their product catalog and create campaigns targeting certain products to specific audiences, or let Facebook automatically deliver the most relevant products to people. Products can be show in single or multiple product ad units.
Product ads are customized for use throughout the customer journey from discovery through purchase. The options advertisers have include automatically reaching people who have visited their website/app or reach people based on specific interests or locations.
Retailers can also curate ads as they see fit. Retailers can highlight products that were viewed on their website/mobile app or showcase bestselling products. Or they can create a multi-product ad that highlights the different benefits of a single product.
“Mobile is very important, one of the things that Facebook has really figured out is mobile, they have figured out the amount of time, the frequency, it is pretty staggering,” said Walls.
Walls said these product ads allow the retailers who have already been advertising on Facebook a chance to ramp it up and for those who have not been advertising already, it opens up another source of advertising for retailers.
For retailers, social and mobile are always on the list, this checks those two boxes off as retailers look at how to sell their products.
Product ads also utilize features that help create a better ad experience. When advertisers use automatic delivery of product ads, the system will turn off ads for specific products when they’re out of stock.