How to use Facebook Instant Experiences (Canvas Ads)

Learn how to set up and use Facebook Instant Experiences (formerly Facebook Canvas)

This guide will provide you with five tactics that you can adopt to create Facebook Instant Experiences (previously known as Canvas).

What’s included?

We will look at action points and best practice tips to help you learn how to create engaging Instant Experiences that offer a fully immersive experience for your customers.

You’ll work through simple tips based on real-life examples, and will learn how to:

• Choose your Instant Experiences objective
• Use CTAs effectively
• Choose powerful imagery
• Test and experiment
• Track Instant Experiences

About the author

Rhian Harris has worked with brands of all shapes and sizes to plan, deliver, and manage all aspects of their online marketing strategies since 2004. She now works as a freelance digital marketing specialist, editor, and community manager, regularly contributing content for Smart Insights.

You can connect on LinkedIn.

What’s inside this guide?

This document is a new concept for Smart Insights that you can access as part of your Business Membership. It is not an in-depth strategy guide. Instead, it provides SMART advice for marketers seeking to make a quick actionable plan that can be implemented simply and effectively for immediate results.

Why is it important?

Facebook doesn’t need any introduction as to its size and reach, or how big an opportunity it presents. Two billion people use Facebook every month, so having a presence is a must-have for business.

For the purpose of this guide, we will focus on Facebook Instant Experiences.

In Facebook’s own words, Instant Experiences are “a full-screen ad experience built for bringing brands and products to life on mobile.” They allow advertisers to deliver fully immersive, interactive content hosted within Facebook, rather than users clicking out of the app.

In short, the ads are built for mobile and to create an engaging experience that the user can fully interact with. They can be intricately customized, load instantly, are full-screen, and are designed for mobile users – which, according to Statista, was 96% of users in Aug.

Users can watch engaging videos and photos, swipe through carousels, tilt to pan and explore lifestyle images with tagged products – all in a single ad. As a result, users can find out the information that they need within the ad, compared to traditional sponsored advertising where the user clicks and potentially gets lost finding out more.

Facebook tests revealed that 53% of users watched at least half of every Instant Experience ad they were served. As many of the ads were over a minute long, it’s easy to see how Instant Experiences can bring some serious engagement opportunities.

About the author

Rhian Harris

Rhian Harris is a copywriter and blogger helping businesses with content for their marketing collateral. Starting out in the shiny new digital world in 2004, Rhian gained experience in all areas of digital media and e-commerce, working in utilities, travel, charity and retail sectors. IDM qualified, Rhian is an online marketing all-rounder with a passion for words. She is a regular expert commentator for Smart Insights as well as other expert sites, as well as her own business Sparkly Content. You can follow Rhian on Twitter and Instagram