- A carousel ad includes two or more “cards,” each of which features its own visual and text-based creatives.
- Carousel ads can showcase multiple products and explain each in detail.
- To enjoy the benefits of carousel ads, you’ll need to find an ad agency capable of unlocking this ad format’s potential.
3 Facebook Carousel Ad Examples: Ensure Yours Do This
In the world of social media advertising, a “carousel” isn’t just an amusement park ride. However, if you’re looking to take your marketing to the next level, they’re definitely more exciting! Carousel ads are one of the most effective advertising formats available on Meta platforms like Facebook and Instagram. According to one study, carousels are Instagram’s most engaging post format, boasting an average engagement rate of 1.92%.Well-made carousel ads can easily get viewers invested in your company’s story, but this isn’t an “instant-win” strategy for digital advertisers. After all, Meta platforms brought in more than $131 billion in ad revenues in 2023—which means the competition is fiercer than ever. But with assistance from qualified ad experts (and a few Facebook carousel ad examples), you’ll be able to run carousel ads that truly strengthen your brand.
What Is a Facebook Carousel Ad?
Unlike standard image or video ads, carousel ads consist of two or more “cards.” Each of these cards features a distinct image/video, headline, description, call to action, and link. To interact with carousel ads, users scroll through cards by clicking arrows or swiping left and right.
Carousel ads are the perfect choice for advertisers who want to:
- Put multiple products on display. Carousel ads can act as virtual catalogs by providing links to images/videos of multiple products.
- Provide a detailed look at a single product. Alternatively, your ad experts can trade breadth for depth by using carousel ads to explore multiple features seen in one product.
- Share a narrative. The sequential nature of carousel ads makes them an excellent choice for companies interested in telling a story.
- Outline procedures. If you want to offer a step-by-step explanation of your business’s inner workings, you can’t go wrong with a carousel ad.
- Get creative. Instead of treating each card in a carousel ad as a single image, talented ad agencies can display an expanded image across multiple cards.
- Show off their service. Companies in the service industry can use carousel ads to provide a detailed look at their service’s benefits.
Best Practices for Carousel Ads
In order to be truly effective, carousel ads need to be built by people who know what they’re doing. While creating carousel ads for your brand, your ad experts should follow Meta’s best practices by:
- Preparing compelling ad creatives. As is the case for any social media ad relying on pictures or videos, your carousel ads will live and die based on the strength of their ad creatives. To this end, your ad agency should ensure that the pictures and videos featured in these ads have a shared visual identity.
- Utilizing every aspect of the carousel format. In addition to high-quality images and videos, your carousel ads should include well-written headlines, link descriptions, and call-to-action buttons.
- Including multiple links. Is your carousel ad designed to highlight numerous products? If so, each card should have a direct link to the product it features.
- Understanding how to connect with people. Pictures of products can make it easier to reach people who have already visited your website’s product pages. Meanwhile, lifestyle imagery can help you build connections with potential customers.
- Considering optimization options. In some cases, Meta Ads Manager will allow your ad agency to show your carousel’s best-performing cards first, display cards as a video, or add music (among other optimization features).
- Thinking about landing pages. Depending on the size of your business, your carousel card links could take viewers to a specific product page or a page for multiple products in the same category.
- Selecting a broad product set. Product sets are predetermined groups of products in your catalog. If your ad experts use one of these sets in a carousel ad, the set in question should be fairly large. Items that are not in stock, rejected, or are variations of the same basic product are excluded from carousel ads based on product sets.
Follow These Carousel Ad Specifications
In addition to these best practices, your advertising agency needs to keep a few design specifications for carousel ads in mind:
Facebook/Meta Audience Network/Messenger
- Minimum number of cards: Two
- Maximum number of cards: Ten
- Recommended aspect ratio: 1:1
- Aspect ratio tolerance: 3% (Facebook only)
- Recommended resolution: 1080 x 1080 pixels
- Supported image formats: .jpg and .png
- Maximum image file size: 30 MB
- Recommended video length: 15 seconds (videos up to 240 minutes supported)
- Supported video formats: See complete list
- Maximum video file size: 4 GB
- Text: 125 characters
- Headline: 40 characters
- Link description: 25 characters
- Minimum number of cards: Two
- Maximum number of cards: Three (Stories) or ten (Feed)
- Aspect ratio: 9:16 (Stories) or 1:1 (Feed)
- Aspect ratio tolerance: 1%
- Resolution: 1080 x 1920 pixels (Stories) or 1080 x 1080 pixels (Feed)
- Supported image formats: .jpg and .png
- Maximum image file size: 30 MB
- Video length: Up to 15 seconds (Stories) or 60 seconds (Feed)
- Supported video formats: See complete list
- Maximum video file size: 4 GB
- Text: Up to 125 characters
- Hashtags: Up to 30 hashtags
Facebook Carousel Ad Examples
Finally, you may still be wondering what to include in your next Facebook carousel ad. Examples from Social Ktchn clients like these can help:
1. Blindster
This ad uses the carousel format to showcase Blindster’s product lineup, from bamboo shades and zebra dual shades (pictured) to roller shades and shutters (later in the carousel). In doing so, it functions as a catalog for Blindster’s product categories—an effect which is strengthened by this ad’s professional photography and compelling explanation of how they can help customers shop for window treatments on a budget.
2. U.S. Wheel Corporation
Like our Blindster carousel ad, this ad for U.S. Wheel Corporation puts the company’s products front and center. However, it takes a different approach to connecting viewers with their products—clicking each of the images featured in this carousel sends potential customers to U.S. Wheel’s selection of truck wheels. That makes this an example of how businesses can use carousel ads to highlight one product (or product category) instead of multiple products.
3. The Lost Bros
This carousel ad for The Lost Bros functions as a hybrid between the two strategies discussed above. Though it highlights four different Lost Bros shirts, it also dedicates two slides to each one, allowing customers to see front and back prints or men’s and women’s variations. In doing so, this ad uses the carousel format to showcase multiple products while providing additional detail about each product on display.
Choose the Right Ad Experts for Your Carousel Ads
Real-world carousels and carousel ads have one thing in common—if you aren’t careful, you could easily find yourself going in circles. Creating social media ads may seem simple enough, but you won’t get the results you’re looking for if you don’t know how to use this format effectively and creatively for your brand. Plus, you’ll add a significant amount of work to your existing duties, which is the last thing you want when you’re already at your max trying to run your business.
Instead, looking for a seasoned social media ad agency can save you tons of time and money today and deliver the ROI you’d never get on your own tomorrow. Social Ktchn definitely fits the bill—we’re responsible for each of the Facebook carousel ad examples featured in this article, and we’d love to create equally engaging ads for your brand. By leveraging all of Meta’s ad formats to create ideal strategies for our clients, we’ve been able to deliver up to a 25x return on their ad spend—and we’re ready to do the same for you.
If you’re ready to work with North Carolina’s leading boutique marketing agency, drop us a line!