Facebook Rolls Out New Ad Format: Collection

Starting today, Facebook is rolling out Collection, a shoppable feed ad that features a collection of products in a mobile shopping experience. Four product images are shown below a multi-product image or video that will drive users to a full-screen takeover.

When a user clicks on one of the four product images in the News Feed, a full page of products opens instantly in Facebook. Clicking on an individual product image will then take the user to the site to purchase or see more.

To do this, a product catalog is required. Advertisers can choose which four products from your feed you wish to feature in the ad, and they can be dynamically arranged by the popularity of the product, or you can manually choose the order. In the full-screen experience, advertisers can choose up to 50 products from the product feed to display.  This ad format is available for the website clicks/traffic and website conversions objectives and is available for the mobile feed-only at this time.

While it doesn’t seem ideal that this adds another step (i.e. another click) to get a user to site, that doesn’t mean that this unit isn’t useful for driving conversion. Similar to the Canvas, it’s meant to be a discovery unit that allows users to browse your content and products without ever leaving the Facebook app, which I appreciate as a user.

In the past, we’ve relied on pop up click thrus and end cards to drive product consideration with video. This new unit will help to tie product a little more closely to how we market a product with our video content. As Facebook works to create a richer brand and shopping experience, this is a step in defining how brands look on social from a consumer perspective and how people discover new products and convert on mobile.

Below are more screenshots of this unit that we have happened upon in our own News Feeds. You can find the creative specs on Facebook’s Ad Guide here and details and FAQs here.