Prepare for more autoplaying video ads to overtake your phone.
Facebook is bringing its autoplay video ads to third-party mobile apps that sell ad space through Facebook's mobile ad network Audience Network, the company announced on Tuesday. Advertisers aren't able to buy ads specifically to run on the mobile ad network; instead it's like an overflow room, where Facebook takes the ads that run on the social network and syndicates them to others' apps based on the advertiser's defined targeting parameters.
But autoplay video ads aren't the only Facebook ad formats being exported to its mobile ad network. The social network is also extending its slideshow-like carousel ads and full-screen click-to-play video spots to non-Facebook apps, as well as its dynamic product ads that retailers can use to market their wares to people who had previously browsed on their e-commerce sites.
The dynamic product ads are getting an added boost when it comes to how brands will be able to use them to get people to buy their products.
In addition to now being able to target people when they're outside of Facebook, brands will soon be able to aim the ads at people based on actual product purchases, whereas before they could only be targeted based on products people had looked at or put in their shopping carts. That means a retailer that sold someone a pair of shoes could follow up with ads touting a top to match.
And Facebook plans to start factoring in how likely someone is to buy a product when determining who to show an ad; previously the company based this educated guesswork on how likely people were to click on an ad, which gets people in the proverbial door but doesn't close the sale.