The Rise of Product-Feed Advertising on Social

— November 4, 2016

Feed-based advertising on social media is attracting much attention nowadays and for good reason — it works. How do we know? For nearly 15 years, marketers have been relying on product display ads to boost advertising campaigns. With documented success in both search and display, isn’t it time to carry these results over to other marketing channels as well?


Social media has exploded in the past few years, but improved advertising is what’s really driving excitement for marketers. With sophisticated targeting capabilities, advanced analytics, and now, product ads — dynamic product ads on Facebook®, in particular — opportunities are available that weren’t possible just a few short years ago. Dynamic creative across social channels is a fairly new concept. But, if you’ve had success in the past with product-listing ads (PLA) in search or dynamic creative in display, now is the time to experiment.


Benefits of Product-Feed Advertising


Product-feed advertising on social may be your solution for delivering highly targeted, personalized ads to your audience in real time and at scale. Here are four advantages to consider around product-feed advertising:



  1. Boosts Ad-Performance Efficiencies

Reaching the right people with the right message isn’t always easy — and no one enjoys seeing ads they care nothing about. Honestly, brands have work to do when it comes to improving ad relevancy and targeting. By automating much of the process, feed-based advertising creates efficiencies across the board, boosting ad performance in ways that truly move the needle.



  1. Delivers Consistent Customer Experiences

If you’re serving product ads to your audience based on previous website behaviors, then it’s absolutely critical that the products you deliver in search and display as well as on Facebook are consistent. Consistency is important not only as consumers return to your website, but also in the ads they view on search or somewhere else altogether. As audiences move from device to device, feed-based advertising allows you to reach them with relevant products at the right time. Additionally, since people are almost always logged in as themselves on social channels, you have access to a tremendous amount of personalized, authenticated data.



  1. Streamlines the Creative Development Process

The purpose of programmatic feed advertising is to make things easier for marketers. After all, it’s one thing to buy media and quite another to create it. Particularly with digital advertising, creative development can have a long lead time, and it’s easy to develop creative fatigue. Programmatic advertising addresses this issue by accelerating the development process. Since you’re assembling ads from the product feed itself — rather than relying on a creative agency or in-house team to put them together — you save time and money. Creative development can be costly, and feed-based advertising alleviates much of this expense.



  1. Provides Ability to Scale

Think about the travel industry with hundreds — even thousands — of destinations to promote at one time, or a large retailer with hundreds of thousands of products to promote. Automation makes it easy to retarget users with relevant ads, reaching them with products they care about when it matters most. Feed-based advertising streamlines the process so that you can combine the right ad or destination with the data you have, effectively creating, managing, and optimizing social ad campaigns on Facebook and Instagram at scale.


Bottom Line


Keeping your brand in front of potential buyers is key, and product-feed advertising on social is a smart, practical strategy that can be personalized and retargeted for maximum impact. If you’ve already enjoyed success in search or display, now is the time to experiment in social. Feed-based advertising can deliver consistent customer experiences across channels, accelerate the creative development process, and boost performance efficiencies across the board. With increased relevance, enhanced targeting, and customized experiences at scale, product-feed advertising on social just makes sense.


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Author: Monica Lay


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