If you’ve worked in social media for any length of time, you’ve likely noticed that posts featuring excellent images pull in much more attention than those that don’t. If you thought that sharing one photo at a time was good for garnering interest from your followers, just imagine how eye-catching a series of five in one post will be! We don’t want to talk in circles about Facebook’s Carousel link ads, so pull up your favorite painted wooden animal and settle in as we explain just how impactful these unique ads truly are:
What IS A Carousel?
In a nutshell, a carousel link ad contains a series of up to five images sporting their own linked URLs in a horizontal row that stretches off page, so viewers must scroll or click to view the entire ad. Similar to the common link ad, carousel ads also include text, a direct link to the items you are promoting, and a bold headline underneath each image. Carousel ads are easily directed at certain audiences, available to target mobile users, and display images in any order that you choose.
Why Are Carousel Ads A Big Deal?
Not only do these miniature photo galleries cram much more visual content per single post than your average ad, Facebook advertisers have noted a 30-50% lower cost-per-conversion and a 20-30% lower cost-per-click rate using carousel ads as opposed to the traditional link ad. Once you have a viewer’s attention with a creative image arrangement, holding it isn’t difficult if you use the ad to display a range of options for whatever you are showcasing, such as a product’s alternative colors, models and patterns, or a series of images that highlight the features of your app or service, to give people numerous reasons to scroll through the entire ad. Since it is easy to adapt carousel ads to your audience with Facebook’s data on user preferences, as well as the areas of your site they visit the most, these vibrant ads are an excellent tool to drive sales, promotions, subscriptions and app installs.
Tips For Building Your Carousel Ads
Creating Carousel link ads isn’t too different from making any other Facebook ad, but there are some surefire methods to get the most out of your carousels. Don’t just toss just any images that you have sitting in your promotional photo folder into a carousel ad when you can craft an interesting story with a series of pictures, or use the bonus image space to highlight the various features of your products. Only use the highest quality images available, keep text to a minimum to let your pictures do the talking, and consider installing a call to action button onto your carousel so anyone interested in the ad can directly “Shop Now”, “Download”, “Sign Up” or whatever else you want fans to do.
Keep in mind that Facebook recommends that images used to make carousel link ads are 1,200 x 628 pixels, with a 1.9:1 image ratio, and that you limit text to 90 characters, headline to 25 characters and link description to 30 characters to ensure that your ads look their best across all platforms.
Carousel link ads are a cost-effective way to display several products in a single ad, while likely slashing your average cost per click, that we believe more brands should be utilizing as a regular part of their Facebook outreach. While we hope that Facebook will continue to improve these ads with the ability to include multiple videos and other helpful features in the near future, we’ve taken their carousel link ads for a whirl, and they’re well worth the ride.
Click HERE to create your own carousel link ads!
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