ICYMI in October: Paid Media & social roundup

New this month, in case you missed it.

FACEBOOK ADS: *NEW* “responsive” ads

Bring in the conversations with responsive (not dynamic) ads.

This month, I stumbled across this on Facebook ads. You can add responsive content consisting of five primary texts, five headlines and five descriptions at ad level. This is different to the old dynamic creative method.

It also allows you to preview the various ad variations to show clients, you can do this by clicking the “View More Variations” button and selecting the different ad copies.

There are also some new custom columns (Headline, Ad Settings and Body, Ad Settings) that you can view winning combinations. These bring in the conversions (unlike Google’s slow answer to this, which is very vague). 

H/T to Lachlan Kirkwood from the awesome The Social Media Geek Out FB group. Also worth pointing out the conversation on my timeline about whether this was, in fact, the same as dynamic ads. Not quite: it’s separate from the dynamic ad creative (ad level). This is just for the ad text, headlines and description fields, no pictures (similar to Google Responsive Text Ads). You don’t need to opt in, so it’s a clever move not to mention the word “dynamic”, which might put novice users off (instead you just add more content to the ad, very clean and simple). You can only use with single image or video at the moment, unlike the old dynamic.

VERDICT: INTERESTING

FACEBOOK ADS: Auto-reorder images for slideshow ads

Create quick, snappy videos.

Facebook has brought out a new feature where you can automatically reorder images for slideshow ads.

This means Facebook will create five variants using the photos you have uploaded and show different combinations of slideshow image videos, this takes only a couple of minutes for Facebook to process the video.

I love using the slideshow ad types to create quick, snappy videos (like YouTube bumper ads) and using the custom text overlay feature to really push the USPs.

VERDICT: GREAT

GOOGLE ADS: *NEW* Lead Form Extensions

Customisation to gather customer information.

Google Ads is now testing lead forms extensions as a new way for businesses to gather customer information. The extension is designed to attract customers with captivating call-to-actions.

Advertisers can then customise lead forms with their own title and description, and  show which pieces of information they want to ask customers for. This includes as many of the following:

• Customer name
• Email address
• Phone number
• Postcode

Advertisers can also add their own background image to the form. Another thing that can be customised is the message that appears after the customer information is submitted.

VERDICT: WAIT AND SEE

We’ve curated and updated the best snippets. To engage in the debate, see Steven’s profile on LinkedIn and follow #door4 so you don’t miss any updates.

Photo by Evgeni Tcherkasski on Unsplash.