We can all agree that Social Media ads are one of the swiftest and compelling ways to connect with your target audience. Thus, making it a vital aspect of marketing. Social media ads provide a great deal of lucrative opportunities to boost your digital marketing campaigns.
These ads utilize all the data users share on social media to offer highly manifested and relevant content, which ultimately enlarges opportunities and introduces your brand to more potential customers.
What’s most important is to understand how this advertising medium works. It is incredibly profitable and allows brands to meet different business goals at relatively low costs.
In this post, you’ll find 6 different types of social media ads you should consider investing in to build brand awareness and increase conversions.
Types of Social Media Ads for Your Business
Here are different types of social media ads that you can choose from, for your next advertising campaign.
1. Image Ads
These are perhaps the most common types of social media ads. Human brain is able to understand pictures faster.Almost every social media platform supports image ads. You’ll find them on news feeds, sidebars, and banners. They’re most powerful on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest, where images are the prevalent form of content. Image advertising gives users more understanding about the ad within the shortest time possible. The Image advertising operates on cost per click. In other words, the advertiser is charged on each click made by a customer. To get the most out of these types of social media ads:
Here is an example of an image ad by Bluehost on Facebook.
Image via Facebook
2. Video Ads
Video is a powerful marketing tool. Video ads have skyrocketed in popularity in the past decade. The benefits of video ads for business are plentiful. When posting a video ad on Youtube, the advanced targeting allows you to choose your audience- meaning you only get views by people who have the potential to be interested in your product, brand or service. The “no skip” function on YouTube also ensures you a level of guaranteed engagement.
Image via Wyzowl
A study by Wyzowl shows video ads are used by 86% of businesses. The same study shows that people watch an average of 19 hours of video content every week. This makes video ads one of the most effective types of social media ads.
Every major social media platform supports video ads. They are visually captivating, which makes them particularly effective in gaining the attention of your target audience. Apart from this, with the right SEO tactics, your video ads can also rank in the search engine results, leading to greater engagement and views.
Here is an example of an in-feed video ad on Facebook.
Image via Facebook
Social Media Video Specs Guide
For Image ads, it’s important to get the dimensions of the videos you publish right. It’ll provide a more pleasant viewing experience for your audience, which maximizes the total views, reach, and engagement.
An in-feed Facebook video ad, for instance, should have a resolution of 1080×1080 and an aspect ratio that’s between 9:16 to 16:9.
For Instagram, you can use:
For TikTok in-feed ads, a resolution of 540×960, 640×64, or 960×540 is best. The aspect ratio can be 9:16, 1:1, or 16:9.
Twitter video ad resolution can be 1280×720 for landscape video ads, 720×1280 for portrait ads, and 720×720 for square ads. The recommended aspect ratio is 16:9 for landscape or portrait video ads and 1:1 for square video ads.
For LinkedIn video ads:
Snapchat video ads should be 1080 x 1920 with an aspect ratio of 9:16.
YouTube video ads can have a minimum dimension of 426 x 240 and a maximum of 3840 x 2160. The recommended aspect ratio is 16:9.
Ensure that your video ads can be understood without the sound on for two reasons:
Make sure that your video has a single powerful message. Short videos, preferably under one minute, tend to perform better. However, don’t be afraid to make it a little longer to convey a compelling message.
It’s best to leave this to a social media manager who’s a strategic communications expert as they’d know exactly how long a particular video should be to become compelling enough.
3. Carousel Ads
Carousel ads are a unique advertising format that combines multiple videos or images into a single ad. Viewers will see everything the advertiser wants them to see in one place.The Carousel format shows two or more images and/or videos, calls to actions, or headlines and links in a single ad. Viewers see the ad then scroll through the carousel cards on their mobile phones, tablets, or computer screens.
Carousel social media ads let you show multiple marketing videos and/or images in one ad. Each video or image can have a headline, description and link.These types of social media ads are most popular on Facebook and Instagram.
You can use carousel ads to advertise real estate, show different features of a product, tell a brand story, show behind-the-scenes shots, or any other product or promotion that fits.
Here is an example of a carousel ad showcasing the different services a tour organizer.
Facebook even supports an optimization feature where your best-performing carousels are displayed first. But if the cards have to follow a sequence to tell a story, opt out of this feature.
To use these types of social media ads effectively, ensure the images or ads you use in your carousel are visually similar to maintain consistency.
4. Stories Ads
Story ads are supported on Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook. These allow you to advertise your products or services in between users’ Stories.
Here’s an example.
Image via Instagram
The short duration of Stories makes these types of social media ads ideal for time-sensitive promotions. Stories have higher visibility as they are at the top of users’ feeds, which makes them great for building awareness.
An Instagram and Facebook Stories ad can be:
With Snapchat’s Story ads, you can reach your target audience in between content or on Snapchat’s Discover section using a branded tile. For the Discover section, you can have a collection of up to 20 images or videos.
5. Message Ads
While most types of social media ads appear in a user’s news feed or Stories, Facebook Messenger ads and LinkedIn Sponsored InMail appear as a message.
Facebook Messenger ads appear in a user’s Chats tab in between their conversations. Here’s how that looks.
Image via Facebook
Interested users can tap on the ad and carry out an automated conversation with your brand. Or the message can redirect them to your product or service pages.
The best part about using the Messenger app is that you can restart conversations with warm leads that have turned cold or customers who’ve messaged your business in the past.
LinkedIn Sponsored InMail also lets you advertise through messages. But in this case, it goes to the users’ LinkedIn inboxes.
Keep your messages simple and direct to get the most out of these types of social media ads.
6. Collection Ads
Collection ads are among the best types of social media ads.
These ads include a cover photo or video, followed by smaller product images that show the details of your products’ or services’ pricing and features.
It’s a form of a storefront that allows your target audience to buy your products without leaving the social media platform. These ads nurture the users’ interest in your brand.
These types of social media ads are highly effective on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat.
You can link each image to a separate URL.
Here is an illustration of how a collection ad appears on Instagram.
Of course, not all types of social media ads will be suitable for your business. Research your audience and choose the ones that you think will resonate with them.
Measure the performance of the ads to figure out the type that helps you meet your campaign objective and don’t be afraid to experiment.