Facebook to Boost Businesses' Sales With New Ad Unit

As of today, brands have a new way to promote their products in the Facebook News Feed. The latest feature, called “product ads,” was designed to help businesses promote multiple products or their entire product catalog across desktop and mobile devices, in the form of either single- or multi-product ad units.

By using Facebook product ads, advertisers will have the flexibility to either manually upload their product catalog and create campaigns promoting certain products to specific audiences, or use Facebook Custom Audiences to automatically deliver the most relevant products to target consumers. With automatic delivery, Facebook will turn off ads for products when they are out of stock.

Some brands have already tested the new ad solution, and are reportedly seeing positive results. Target said in a statement that by using product ads, it saw a 20 percent increase in conversion compared to other Facebook ads.

David Spitz, president and chief operating officer (COO) at digital publishing platform RebelMouse, thinks that with the launch of product ads, Facebook will be able to offer ads for multiple products based on a user’s interest.

“For example, I like Nikes and looked to purchase Nikes on footlocker.com. Now when I’m on Facebook, I’m delivered an ad that has those Nikes plus other relevant sneakers that are similar, so I’m drawn in on that personal level,” Spitz says.

He adds that this move is a reminder that Facebook has become a publisher now, as opposed to simply a social network. “The announcement confirms that content and community are just the beginning. This is part of the ongoing trend toward creating ‘full-funnel’ media experiences that convert content into community and community into commerce,” he notes.

In addition to this new ad unit, Facebook will also soon be able to better leverage social celebrities to help businesses sell their products, as its “influencer marketing” patent was just granted this week.