Facebook News Feed Ads Are Changing

author image Written by: Jérôme Léon Categories - In The News, SEO Tips>Ad Management, Social Media

Facebook to Update Its Ad Format

Significant changes are currently happening at Facebook. The latest? Big updates to their ad front. If you’re using Facebook for advertising, then you need to be aware of this update. Starting August 19, Facebook is rolling out changes to their ad layouts, taking them from a 2:3 aspect ratio to 4:5. This change will shrink the amount of text and image size. Text will drop from 7 lines to only 3 with a “See More” prompt to expand text beyond that. This news was firstly disclosed by Susan Wenograd, VP of Marketing Strategy at Aimclear, and was later confirmed by digital marketer David Herrmann.

comparison of Facebook feed ads new ration — *Source: Facebook*

These moves come into play as Facebook increases its ad pricing while more advertisers join the platform. Due to the fact that Facebook owes much of its success to the growth of its small business accounts, marketers can expect that these changes will drive advertisers to make more engaging Facebook ads. Director of creative strategy at marketing agency Midnight Oil, Jack Appleby, is eager to see how Facebook advertisers handle the “significantly” shorter copy length. “The standard pithy one-liner plus feature-approach plus won’t comfortably fit in three lines. Social copywriters will have to make a prioritization choice. I bet brands will double-down on feature marketing, while bigger brands will stick with feel-good copy down the lifestyle line,” Appleby said. Others like digital marketing manager at Ko Marketing, Andrea Cruz, say it will be interesting to evaluate if one paragraph, bullet points, or one sentence performs best in the Facebook News Feed.

What Does This Mean for Marketers?

With these changes, videos will also need to be optimized for the new size, otherwise they will be automatically masked when the changes take effect. “Less text, so it’s skimmable. Imagery that gets to the focal point quicker. These two things force marketers to synthesize their message into something instantly understandable. It makes sense given the insane amount of content we are now seeing on a day-to-day basis.” Wenograd trusts that if an advertiser is going to interrupt a user’s primary reason for being on a platform, the message needs to be focused, concise and adaptable. She also stated that Facebook’s announcement comes at a time when brands are currently lamenting their declining direct-ROI from the platform. If you’re looking to maximize your Facebook ads, you’ll need to make those three lines super catchy, while also keeping the image height change in mind in your formatting to ensure optimal presentation.

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Jérôme Léon

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Facebook is ditching podcasts and plans to stop offering them from June 3.

The social-media giant will no longer allow users to add podcasts to the service as of this week but plans to remove them altogether starting June. Both its short-form audio product Soundbites and the central audio hub will be discontinued, Bloomberg reports.

These options were first introduced last April, as part of Facebook’s broader effort to promote social audio. That’s when Meta presented a range of upcoming podcast options: on-page display tools and direct connection options. Both were supposed to let Facebook users listen to podcasts from within the app without leaving it. In June, Meta launched its podcast support tools, with several launch partners.

they’re also shutting down soundbites, their shortform audio product, and getting rid of the audio hub. live audio rooms are just becoming part of facebook live
— Ashley Carman (@ashleyrcarman) May 2, 2022

Now, not even a year later, Facebook is shifting its focus to other initiatives.

We’re constantly evaluating the features we offer so we can focus on the most meaningful experiences – a Meta spokesperson said in an email sent to Bloomberg. The person allegedly added that they don’t have a specific date on when Soundbites and the audio hub would shut down but it will be in the “coming weeks.”

Facebook will also cut the site’s Soundbites and Audio hubs and integrate its Live Audio Rooms feature into its broader Facebook Live suite. They also said they will not warn users of this, but will rather let creators break the news how they see fit.

Why the change? Probably because they need to save some money:

After the start of COVID, the acceleration of e-commerce led to outsized revenue growth, but we’re now seeing that trend back off. However, based on the strong revenue growth we saw in 2021, we kicked off several 2 multi-year projects to accelerate some of our longer-term investments, especially in our AI infrastructure, business platform, and Reality Labs. These investments are going to be important for our success and growth over time so I continue to believe we should see them through. But with our current business growth levels, we’re now planning to slow the pace of some of our investments.

This might not be a big deal and some significant news for everyone, but as Andrew Hutchinson from Social Media Today noticed, it shows how Facebook’s focus can easily shift and ‘betray’ the creators that use the platform. What does that mean for future Meta visitors and builders?