Facebook ads are getting a face lift starting Wednesday, February 29th.
And by face lift, I mean they are getting tighter, but should still look roughly the same.
According to Facebook, there will be new ad specs for the Premium and Marketplace Ads: “As part of the upgrade, the copy in all newly submitted ads will need to be 90 characters (down from the 135 characters previously). Testing has revealed this to be the optimal character length.”
Don’t know the difference between a Premium ad and a Marketplace ad?
The Premium ads are the ads on the Facebook homepage (usually with bigger images) on the Sponsored are on the right hand side. The ads include either an image/photo, video, question, status update, event, or link. These ads are bought directly via Facebook sales reps and usually have very high monthly minimums (i.e. $25,000).
The Marketplace ads are the smaller ads on subsequent Facebook pages on the right hand side (see the three little ads on the top right section of my profile page below). These ads can either be Facebook ads with a Like button (if it promoted a Facebook page), lead to an external website, or be in the Sponsored Stories format. These are self-serve ads, which anyone can easily set up in the Advertising section of Facebook, and are bought on a bidding model that is CPM- or CPC-based.
The change in ad specs will certainly result in smaller ads (the change applies to body copy character length only, no mention on title and image size) and while Facebook said that testing shows this to be the optimal length, they don’t reference which test they did. Smaller ads also mean more ad real estate for Facebook – so I’m assuming instead of showing just three ads at a time, Facebook will start selling more ads per page.
This change is only applicable to new ads, so if you have existing ads with the 135 character limit, you can keep those. Although eventually you’ll need to replace those ads anyway to avoid banner fatigue, which means that sooner or later, all Facebook ads will adhere to the 90-character body copy limit.
So be ready for more succinct Facebook ads in the (very near) future!
