Back in October 2015, Facebook began testing a new experience called Canvas. This new feature provides a fast-loading, full-screen experience that allows a user to browse a variety of products on mobile before they are taken to the retailer’s website. (See more on my previous article.)
More people are spending more time on mobile, typically in just a few apps at a time, including Facebook. Businesses advertising on Facebook found it challenging to provide “compelling brand and product stories on mobile in ways that are enjoyable for people and effective for their business.” (Facebook for Business)
The data has shown that people are learning about brands and products right in mobile apps, thus Businesses advertising want to provide more creative ways to share their information with an audience in this platform.
Facebook has always been “committed to building great mobile experiences for people and doing so also opens up new creative possibilities for advertisers. We’ve invested in engaging experiences like video and the carousel format to empower advertisers with more creative space to share their brand and products on mobile.” (Facebook for Business)
However, when a user clicks on an ad to open a website that site is usually slow to load and not necessarily optimized for mobile. This can be frustrating for users. Additionally, website pages are growing in file size. Website pages are now, on average, 3 times larger than they were in 2001. This means slow load times and can mean people abandoning the website altogether. Whether they want the product or not.
Facebook explained Canvas on their Facebook for Business blog today:
“Canvas helps advertisers achieve any objective by giving businesses a fully customizable digital space on which to build multimedia stories. Canvases open from Facebook ads in News Feed to reveal a full-screen experience where advertisers can use a mix of video, still images, text and call-to-action buttons to build beautiful and effective brand and product experiences on mobile.”
During the testing phase, several large companies had great success with using Canvas:
- Coca-Cola reached nearly 16 million people and had an average ad view time of 18 seonds.
- Lowe’s had people looking at their canvas ads for an average of 28 seconds.
- L’Occitane ads had an 11% increase in ad recall compared to their link ads alone.
To see more about how Canvas Ads work and to see other success stories visit the Facebook for Business blog.