• Facebook has several different ad formats, and they can each drive your business in unique ways
• Image and Video Ads have proven formulas for increasing site traffic and developing audience engagement
• Carousel and Collectiven Ads let your customers explore your products and seamlessly transition from interest to action

How Many Types of Facebook Ads Are There?

If you’re not leveraging Facebook and Instagram ads to drive your business, you’re missing out on one of the largest marketing opportunities in the world today. Between the two there are over 5 billion users representing every country and every continent (yes, even Antarctica!), and there’s no better way to take your company from local to global overnight than through a well-crafted Meta ad campaign. 

Of course, every one of those users is as unique as the businesses who are targeting them; developing the perfect ad campaign for your brand means experimenting with multiple ad formats to find out how to reach as many of them as possible. Depending on what you’re doing, how you want to connect with various segments, and where they are in your pipeline, you may need wildly different ads to nurture your leads to conversion.

But how many different types of Facebook ads are there, and how can a savvy business owner deploy them to their maximum potential? Well, as experts in Facebook marketing, we’ve explored all four ad types Facebook offers, and we’ve got a treasure trove of tips and tricks to use them to their full potential. 

Should I Pick My Own Content, or Let Meta Handle it?

Generally, there are two broad categories of ads, and which one you select can have a significant impact on the traction it gets. 

Static Ads are content that ad creators upload themselves, and they don’t change over time. What you upload is what your audience will see. Static Ads allow you to deliver exactly the message you want your audience to see, as well as change your content whenever you want. 

Dynamic Ads are a powerful tool for automating and modulating your ad content based on popularity and engagement. You can upload your own content, or you can leverage your catalog to have Meta load in the images to those placements. On the plus side, Dynamic Ads can deliver a more personalized experience for individual users by retargeting based on factors such as previous views or products in their cart. On the down side, you do lose some control over the content that users see. 

Both formats can be used for any of Facebook’s four ad types: Image Ads, Video Ads, Carousel Ads, and Collection Ads, and curating each type takes a solid knowledge of how and to whom you want to market.

Image Ads

Let’s not kid ourselves: a picture may be worth a thousand words, but the perfect image ad series can mean thousands of new customers each spending thousands of dollars on your products and services. Facebook Image Ads can be powerful reminders of your brand, and a properly constructed and sequenced collection of vids and pics can walk consumers through your funnel with statistical reliability. 

Creating an optimal Image Ad is all about getting the right combination of creatives, and there’s actually strong data to back it up. Meta has done extensive research on effective structuring and sequencing, and has developed some winning combinations depending on your campaign goals:

Increase Site Traffic by running a static ad for 1-4 days, and then a supporting video ad on day 4. This simple strategy outperforms control ads on Facebook. 

Maximize Site Traffic: If you have a particularly important campaign that relies heavily on generating traffic right now, the best campaign strategy is a static ad for 1-4 days followed by another static ad on day 4. This increases site traffic by 1.7X on average. 

Develop Online Conversation: A video ad for 1-4 days followed by a static ad on day 4 gets people talking about your product with a longer narrative and a reminder image increases online chatting by 1.3X for the average business. 

Of course, there’s no magic bullet for Image Ads, and a lot will depend on your brand, creative work, and overall strategy. You’ll need to rely on tangible metrics and data that reflect your campaign priorities, and be willing to evolve your campaign over time as new data rolls in.

Video Ads

Video Ads are one of the best ways to tell the story of your brand and connect with customers. While Videos Ads were already a popular way of connecting with customers, they are steadily gaining even more traction, so having top-quality content is a must. They can be distributed in-stream through Facebook NewsFeed and Facebook Watch to reach a wide audience quickly. 

Video Ads are extremely dynamic, and creators can use a variety of formats and styles depending on their campaign goals:

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• Slideshows allow you to make quick, lightweight video content using the images you already have. 
• Stories are the content that tell potential customers who you are and what you do. 
• Carousels are curated collections of several videos that let your audience interact with your content.
• Collections are videos paired with your products and services that let customers explore them more deeply.
• Messenger videos link to Messenger and serve as conversation starters for people who want to know more. While these are still valuable ads, link formats are declining in popularity as Meta steps away from news content to focus on entertainment. 
• Playables give customers an opportunity to try out your app through a simple preview.
• Instant Experiences are immersive pieces of content that let interested viewers blow your ad up into a full-screen mini film.
• In-Stream Videos operate within streaming content on Facebook.
• Reels are increasingly popular, and allow you to connect with new audiences and express yourself. Expect to see Reels continue to dominate user feeds, which means marketers will need to focus on creating more entertaining and engaging content that will tap into a wider audience of non-followers.

Regardless of the format that you choose, just make sure you keep Video Ad content at appropriate lengths for your audience. Facebook will let you create ads anywhere from 5 seconds to 10 minutes long, but they will be most effective if they are around 15 seconds and present in skippable and non-skippable versions. 

Carousel Ads

Your Feed is the home base of your Facebook marketing funnel, and Carousel Ads are the strings of cyclable content potential customers can scroll through when they’ve paid you a visit and want to explore more. These ads allow you to showcase a range of products you offer, and because it’s easy to go crazy, Facebook provides a lot of guidance for best practices.

Respect Your Audience’s Experience: Yes, these ads are about you, but they’re for your customers. Facebook has developed solid design, text, and technical suggestions that will optimize this format for your viewers so they can interact and scroll quickly to find what they’re interested in. 

Be Concise: Carousels can have up to 10 individual cards, and each one should have an eye-grabbing image supported by concise, snappy text.

Think Big Picture: A carousel is a single ad format made up of several other ads, so make sure everything you’re grouped together makes sense as a cohesive unit.

Leverage Carousel Optimization: Meta provides users with a lot of data and support, and they offer features like automatically showing your best-performing card first, turning your carousel into a video display, adding maps and music, and a variety of other options. 

Collection Ads

Collection Ads are powered by Meta’s Instant Experience, which lets customers seamlessly transition from a clickable ad to exploring your products in a miniature virtual storefront. They are an important part of your Dynamic Ads portfolio that showcase curated portions of your product line for potential buyers. There are three templates to choose from, and each offers a unique experience with your products and services.

Instant Storefront is a browsable mini store that lets customers click through a collection of four or more similar products. The grid layout makes it easy to highlight a particular product, and supports it with features like “Suggested for You” and “Most Viewed”. Instant Storefronts drive customers towards your app and facilitate easy purchasing.

The Instant Lookbook template lets customers familiarize themselves with what your products can do, and tells the story of your brand to stimulate sales. It’s a digital version of your printed materials, and should give customers plenty of space to explore. 

Instant Customer Acquisition is all about driving conversation and encouraging specific action on your app or website. These powerful ads should be supported by stunning hi-res content that makes customers want to be a part of your brand. 

Making the Most of Your Facebook Ad Campaigns

Facebook advertising is complicated, and if you’re just getting familiarized with all the different types of Facebook ads your head may already be spinning. It’s very hard to know exactly when to leverage these four ad types for your business—much less how to create them—and business owners are often in for an expensive and frustrating process trying to figure it all out and start reliably converting more customers. 

Fortunately, you don’t have to waste your time and ad budget on trial and error. At Social Ktchn, we’re Facebook and Instagram ad experts. We have a wealth of experience creating effective and efficient Image, Video, Carousel, and Collective Ads for companies across the spectrum of business, and we know exactly when and how to deploy them to make the maximum impact for your investment. With a streamlined, eye-catching Facebook Ad Campaign that’s perfectly optimized and targeted, we can drive your sales and help you scale your business at speed.

Let’s chat, brainstorm, and get your ad campaigns moving in the right direction together.