4 Key Facebook trends for 2016

1. Facebook mobile, not desktop, now a primary channel for e-commerce Mobile, assuredly, is not new. What is new is the e-commerce sector’s much more vigorous spend levels on the format. In prior years, desktop was an old gift that kept on giving to e-commerce advertisers — most noticeably in North America, where desktop penetration is relatively high. Sure, click-through rates were lower, but impressions were substantially less expensive (registration required), and purchase rates were slightly higher. Yet these trends no longer hold true in the first quarter of 2016. In 2014, North American e-commerce desktop CPMs were more than double comparative mobile CPMs. In this most recent quarter, that difference has shrunk to roughly 40 percent. Meanwhile, North American mobile e-commerce CTRs are now more than 200 percent higher than desktop figures, and large advertisers are seeing mobile purchase rates catch up or surpass those of desktop. Combined with mobile-heavy international markets and the overall consumer shift to mobile, 60 percent of Facebook e-commerce ad spend was mobile-targeted in Q1 2016 — a 15-percent jump from the prior quarter. 2. Dynamic product ads helping to drive increased returns Dynamic product ads (DPA) are arguably among the highest-profile new ad units from Facebook — allowing for new use cases like the retargeting of users with related products or taking a second crack at converting a user who had previously abandoned their cart on the website. These units have been a hit, particularly with retailers who deal with a variety of products, as they can automatically populate the “carousel-like” unit with personalized, available products. While not appropriate for every e-commerce business, advertisers that have adopted DPA have seen noticeable improvements in performance compared with their ads using website custom audience (WCA) — a legacy means of targeting specific users on Facebook. 3. FAN expansion creates opportunity for e-commerce advertisers Back in January 2016, Facebook announced that its Audience Network product — which allows for Facebook native ads to be placed on a wide variety of mobile apps — was dramatically expanding to access mobile Web inventory. 4. Video continuing to make inroads Much like Audience Network, direct response-focused e-commerce advertisers initially lagged behind their gaming counterparts when it came to deploying video ads on Facebook. However, with video ads helping boost conversion rates and return on ad spend, while also minimizing overall CPAs for e-commerce advertisers, the format is one of the fastest-growing for the vertical.

Courtesy of MarketingLand.

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