Zak Stambor says, “Facebook Inc.’s newest shopping ad format, which it calls Collection, aims to drive product discovery while also presenting mobile users who tap on the ad a direct-response format that leads them to click and buy. The ads will begin rolling out Thursday.

Collection provides a mobile ad format for retailers to tell “visual product stories,” says Maz Sharafi, Facebook’s director of product marketing. The ads feature a primary video or image above product images. When a user clicks on the ad, it quickly opens a full-screen display that features up to 50 products at a time. Clicking on a product then takes the shopper to the product page on the retailer’s website or app.

There are two ways to create the new ads: Retailers can manually select the images that appear below the product image and in the larger display that appears when the ad is clicked. Or, Facebook can draw on the product catalog the retailer has uploaded to the social network to dynamically and automatically place products in those spots based characteristics defined by the merchant.

“Our idea was to create a powerful, engaging ad format that pairs video and related products, but that also delivers a fast experience,” Sharafi says”.

Facebook’s new shopping ads aim to let retailers tell ‘visual product stories’

Internet Retailer

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