Facebook has rolled back 17 of its ad formats which were used to build social engagement in a bid to steer its advertising towards driving business outcomes.
The formats no longer supported by the social media giant include boosting the share of comments, video playlists and political endorsements.
As explained on the Facebook for Business page, those types of posts were not promoted frequently and when they were, they did not bring strong results.
“We want to help advertisers drive business outcomes while providing people with the most engaging experiences possible, and our ads ecosystem will continue to evolve to meet these objectives,” reads Facebook’s statement.
Taptica’s head of strategic partnerships, Amit Dar, believes rolling back the ads is an indication of “changing expectations of social media advertising”. While previous formats measured success based on social engagement, this is of little use to most brands and focusing on formats with measurable business outcomes will provide value to brands.
“By allowing brands to use its own KPI’s for a campaign, it will allow them to more closely align all performance marketing spend and more accurately measure success. We would expect to see similar guidelines rolled out across the Facebook portfolio, and more widely across social media platforms over the coming months,” he commented.
Rainbow’s CRO, James Collier, highlights that while “decluttering” ad forms is a positive change, it’s important to listen to customers.
“With online advertising, it really is a case of less is more, especially on mobile where the screens are smaller, so we need to work towards a situation where the very best formats are used increasingly strategically, to let brands cut through without disrupting and alienating consumers,” he explained.
The formats will be dropped starting September.