Facebook have been making big changes to their desktop ads recently, with the right hand column adverts now considerably increased in size. They’ve been testing this for a while, but have finally rolled it out across the board:
It’s bigger. The creative in the new design will be 2.5x the size in the old one. This gives you more space to tell your story and capture the attention of your customers.
It’s better. With fewer adverts on a given page, each advert gets significantly more attention when compared to the old format. We’ve also seen significantly higher click-through rates with the new design.
It’s simpler. You only need to upload a single creative for both News Feed and the right column. This makes it significantly easier for you to create adverts for News Feed and the right column simultaneously.
As Facebook themselves say:
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Photo adverts created before 24 June will not be eligible for the larger format and will only appear in the smaller format. In order for your adverts to run in the new format, you’ll need to upload images in new specs (see above)
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If you are already running Video and offer adverts in News Feed, they will automatically show up in the large-format right-column advert
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Link, offer event, Page like and desktop app adverts will only appear in the large-format right-column advert if the uploaded image already meets the new format specifications
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Text adverts will not be supported in the new right-column format. Any text adverts created before 24 June will only appear in the old format until the end of August.
Tip: Give your large-format adverts a name that is distinctive from your smaller adverts. As an example, you can call your new summer sale advert “Large-right-column-SummerSale-Advert1” to be able to easily identify it within your Adverts Manager and within reporting.
Kate Tyler is the founder of Shake Social and our long time social media expert. A regular speaker at events, Kate offers consultancy and training on a range of digital marketing topics, in particular safeguarding and using social media in an educational setting.