Digital Buzz – Facebook Mid-Roll Ads and Expanded Retargeting Strategies on the Cards for 2017

It can be difficult to keep up with all of the technological advances happening in our world – there’s always so much going on! Today, we look at some of the latest developments and upcoming announcements for Facebook!

Facebook Finally Trialling Mid-Roll Video Ads

Although SponsoredLinX first reported on Facebook mid-roll ads last August (when they were released during live-streams) it’s been reported that the social media platform are now trialling the advertising feature for normal video content.

According to various sources such as Recode, Facebook’s mid-roll ads will appear 20 seconds into the video and will result in a 55% ad revenue share for advertisers. The only catch? Ads must be at least 90 seconds long. It’s a good incentive for publishers to create attention-grabbing content – and therefore, money – but only time will tell when we will see these ads released. We’ll keep you updated!

Facebook Retargeting Ads to Help Advertisers Target New Customers

While Facebook’s Dynamic ads do a great job at singling out those who have viewed a product on your website and then popping an ad into their feed, it’s been somewhat harder to target new customers. Thankfully, Facebook seems to be remedying this with advanced retargeting options.

So How Will They Work?

Imagine a Facebook user has been searching online – across a number of retailers – for coffee machines. Maybe they’ve even followed a few coffee specialist pages on their Facebook? With the expansions to Facebook’s remarketing ads, this would mean that they would then begin seeing more ads in their news feed for coffee machines – including yours!

By uploading a catalogue of products you’d like to promote, you can then select your preferred target audience group. Facebook’s algorithm will then assess how users interact with those products online – both on Facebook and across retailer websites/apps – and direct potential customers toward your products.

According to AdWeek, Facebook’s Director of Product Marketing, Maz Sharafi, has explained that one of the main benefits to this dynamic remarketing strategy is that it removes a lot of the trial and error of creating individual ads for different types of customers.

“…to sell 1,000 products you have to create almost 1,000 different ads to reach those products to different people. With dynamic ads, you’re effectively creating one ad,” he said.

While Facebook retargeting ads are currently only available to US retailers and ecommerce brands, it should only be a few months before they are rolled out to other global regions.

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