Informative

What You Need To Know About Instant Experience

As you may have already heard last month, Facebook has officially renamed the mobile ad unit formerly known as ‘Canvas ads’, now calling it Instant Experience ads. In addition to the name change, Facebook is also expanding its range of capabilities which promises to help businesses with a variety of objectives.

Instant Experience Success

Launched in 2016, Facebook Canvas ads was an ad type that gave advertisers the opportunity to create immersive and visually appealing content to its viewers. It’s a full-screen experience that drives engagement and can help generate interest and intent on people’s Facebook & Instagram feeds. This feature enables advertisers to offer viewers a full-screen, interactive ad format, which is hosted completely on Facebook, meaning customers can look at and engage with the mobile content without having to leave the app and go on the advertiser’s website. It also gives people the chance to check out engaging photos and videos, swipe through carousels, tilt to view different angles and more, all in one single ad.

The recent successes and popularity of Instant Experience ad (formerly known as Facebook Canvas ads) campaigns have helped the ad type become a real favourite amongst social media advertisers around the world. In fact, Facebook has revealed that the number of campaigns using the Instant Experience format has more than doubled in the last 12 months. This could also be put down to the fact that Instant Experience ads now impressively load 15 times faster than standard mobile websites, allowing brands and businesses to seamlessly connect with users.

What’s changed?

Firstly, the name change was due to the fact that Facebook felt ‘Canvas’ wasn’t entirely representative of the type of message that these ads want to convey. Instead, Instant Experience offers a more suitable and appropriate name, worthy of the overall experience that users will encounter.

Other than the change of name, Facebook has worked on improving the performances of Instant Experience ads, whilst adding to its range of templates and capabilities.

Instant Forms

In addition to the current set of templates, Facebook has decided to add a new one called Instant Forms, making it easier for people to share their contact details with a certain business. Here’s the full list of templates that Facebook’s Instant Experience now offers.

• Instant Storefront helps companies sell products in a grid format.
• Instant Lookbook allows businesses to display products in the context of a lifestyle image.
• Instant Customer Acquisition helps businesses drive customer action by displaying special offerings and including a clear CTA.
• Instant Storytelling makes use of images and videos to give people a better feel for your brand.
• Instant Form (NEW) lets people easily share their contact information so they can learn more about what you’re offering.

Facebook Pixel

Facebook also announced it will be introducing new methods for businesses to help them understand the progress that is made between seeing an Instant Experience ad and actually completing a purchase. This update will open the gate for more opportunities for businesses to re-engage with customers that have expressed interest with them in the past.

It has now been made possible for businesses to integrate the Facebook pixel into their Instant Experience, enabling them to obtain more detailed data and accurate insights about their visitors’ online behaviour.

The ability to retarget customers who have interacted with a certain brand in the past is an absolute game-changer and one that will certainly excite social media advertisers around the world, so make sure to keep an eye on this one!

Furthermore, advertisers will also have the opportunity to embed third-party pixels (e.g. Google Analytics) within their Instant Experience ad, allowing them to track the engagement levels and compare their Instant Experience campaign performance to other campaigns.

Instant Experiences with The Next Ad

Creating Instant Experiences couldn’t be easier when using The Next Ad’s platform! Previously, the only way you could do so was to create an Instant Experience from scratch. However, we are now pleased to be able to offer you the ability to create Instant Experiences from existing templates! The templates you can choose from are: Instant Customer Acquisition, Instant Lookbook, Instant Storefront, Instant Storefront (Grid), Instant Storytelling, Instant Form.

Upon selecting your template of preference, a Facebook modal will pop up allowing you to work with that template via a Facebook interface. Our latest update has also enabled our users to add an option to modify previously created Instant Experiences. This would allow you to to edit draft Instant Experiences or copy already published Instant Experiences in order to use them as your new template.

Takeaway

With these recent updates in mind, we’re expecting the number of Instance Experience campaigns to increase and perform even better in the near future, as the newly introduced retargeting and performance tracking possibilities promise to make this an indispensable ad type for Facebook and Instagram advertisers.

And if you haven’t yet, don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter in order to stay up to date with our latest content, news, updates and inspirational blogs & whitepapers!