Advertisers rejoice: Facebook have announced that they’ll be working on yet another way to prove that ads on their network can drive sales for businesses, rather than brand awareness.

The network has plans in place to start testing ‘shoppable video’ from as soon as next month.

This new ad format will see video ads that users can watch products in action in brand-focused videos– say, a clip of a runner in an ad for trainers– then tap on the ad to find out more about products they could buy.

Information about the tapped product will appear inside the ad, then if the user decides to buy it, they’ll be able to tap again to be taken to the company’s site and complete their purchase.

At first read, this might not sound too different from how Facebook ads already work.

After all, the customer’s journey from Facebook to product page via an ad won’t really change at all with this development. Users will still view an ad, click on it and be directed to a company’s site to purchase products.

Shoppable video, though, is a whole new level of interactivity within Facebook ads, and we can’t wait to see what this means for product sales.

Facebook ads are already a really powerful tool for driving traffic to a site, but interactive video ads might just be the way to get a target audience interested and invested before they even click through to a product page.

So watch this space– and keep an eye on your news feeds for shoppable ads…