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5 Types of Facebook Ads to Utilize This Holiday Season

NOV 28, 2020

Facebook is one of the biggest advertising platforms in the world – second only to Google – but it can get a bit of a bad rap. Many see Facebook ads on the site as nothing more than an awareness tool. And that muddies the water between ad spend and return on investment.

Facebook advertising remains incredibly powerful. The following stats prove it:

  • More than half of all Canadians check Facebook once per month.
  • More than 14 million Canadians check their Facebook news feed every day.
  • There are more than 19 million Facebook users in Canada.
  • 45 percent of people use Facebook once per day

In this post, we outline how to plan your Facebook advertising this holiday season. We discuss the importance of paid social, different types of ads you can use, what makes for great ads, and some useful tools that help with ad creation.

Why you need paid social with organic

Facebook ads: who needs them if you’ve got organic, right?

Everyone. Increased competition for space in user feeds is now so fierce that going 100 percent organic isn’t a great strategy. Most firms now adopt a hybrid approach, taking advantage of the benefits of both types of outreach.

In general, organic is for improving your online presence and reputation, allowing you to construct a more detailed brand persona. Paid is for increasing your reach and raising awareness among specific audiences. Ideally, you need both to thrive.

Here are some stats that prove the value of paid social:

  1. The average Facebook user clicks on 11 ads per month.
  2. The number of impressions generated by Facebook ads grew 33 percent last year.
  3. Facebook is responsible for 80.4 percent of social traffic referral to eCommerce sites.
  4. More than 94 percent Facebook’s paid ad revenue comes from mobile.

Types of Facebook ads

Facebook – like most online ad platforms – offers several types of ads, each with a different format and objectives.

Link-click ads

Link click ads are perhaps the most common type of ad on Facebook. These rely on users clicking a link in the right column, desktop or mobile newsfeeds, or on secondary sites, such as Instagram. They’re ideal for driving people directly to your landing pages and getting them interested in products now. You’ll need to keep the ad copy short, though – Facebook limits you to just 90 characters.

Video ads

Video ads are similar to link-click ads but have a slightly different objective. You’re still trying to get people to follow links to your landing pages, but it is not a pure sales play. Often, companies will use Facebook videos to talk about their brand or even entertain their audience.

Placement works in just the same way as link-click ads, but instead of a static image, a video appears. Facebook allows videos up to 4 GB and lasts a maximum of 120 minutes, giving you a massive scope to communicate with your audience. Most videos are in the 15 to 30-second range.

Boosted page posts

Boosted page posts are tools Facebooks gives you for extending the reach of posts you place on your Facebook page. Clicking the boost page allows you to set up bidding methods to target your audience. Again, the purpose is to get people to click your links and forward them to your landing pages.

Multi-product carousels

Facebook allows you to create multi-product carousels that display the types of items your audience might want to buy in the desktop newsfeed, mobile newsfeed, and audience network. You can add up to ten images and videos, and include headlines and links to all your products from a single ad box. Ecommerce companies find this particular option very useful.