Deep customer engagement potential with Facebook’s new Canvas

Going beyond a typical news feed ad

As an advertising tool, Canvas creates News Feed ads. The difference is that canvases open from Facebook ads in News Feed to reveal a full-screen experience. Canvas allows advertisers to mix video, photos, text, and call-to-action buttons.

So much possibility

Mixing these elements empowers advertisers to create fully immersive environments for users, which are ultimately more engaging experiences. Within a canvas, consumers can swipe through a carousel of images, tilt to view panoramic images and zoom in to view images in detail. This creates an experience for consumers in ways that mobile sites just can’t match. Plus, because of Facebook’s technology, Canvas ads still load 10 times faster than standard mobile Web.

Product design manager Jessica Watson said the idea for Canvas was to “raise the bar for what people and advertisers should see on their mobile phones.”

Empowering tool for advertisers

The launch of Facebook’s Canvas ad platform opens up a wealth of new capabilities for marketers. Canvas enables advertisers to create interactive, innovative ads that are just one click away from news feed, without adding a frustrating user experience. According to Facebook’s product lead Paresh Rajwat, early trials of Canvas ads found that 53 percent of users viewed more than one-half of those ads, with an average view time of 31 seconds. For top-performing ads, view time rose around 70 seconds.

Interactive storytelling

Facebook’s goal with Canvas was to give brands the opportunity to customize the experience and drive deeper consumer engagement and action. Whether it be a new product launch, an online catalog, or brand storytelling. So far, brands such as Gatorade and Coca-Cola have launched campaigns of interactive storytelling experiences with canvas.

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The Canvas Builder tool makes it easy for anyone to create a Canvas. Canvas is available to advertisers in both Power Editor and the Publishing Tools tab on their Page. It requires no coding or new software. The tool also includes real-time mobile previews for advertisers. Facebook is also working to expand Canvas to areas such as Instagram and Facebook Audience Network sometime in 2016.

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