Dive Brief:
- Facebook took advantage of the Cannes Lions festival to announce a new, more interactive, version of mobile ads.
- The announcement by Chief Product Officer Chris Cox emphasized the mockups were examples of what future mobile ads might look like on Facebook’s app.
- The new ads offer viewers an interactive experience while navigating within the app.
Dive Insight:
Facebook shared a new vision for mobile video ads on the social media platform’s app with the Cannes Lions festival audience, showing a prototype for a more immersive user experience. This new video-rich format addresses other social media platforms, such as Snapchat’s emphasis on video, and also recognizes that mobile ads made up 73% of Facebook’s ad revenue in Q1 2015.
The company didn’t say when the new ad product will officially roll out, but since it’s making an announcement in a splashy forum it’s expected to not be too far in the future. Cox was quoted in a Marketing Land article, explaining the more interactive version of mobile ads, saying, “Rather than looking at an image of a watch, or a video, you’re encouraged to pick it up and look around it, because it’s a beautiful piece of jewelry, the kind of thing you want to turn around in your hands.”
In a separate announcement on Wednesday, Facebook also set its Messenger app free. That is, the messaging service, which has been increasingly compared to Facebook-acquired WhatsApp, is now available for anyone to use, including users without accounts for the social network. The tech giant recently also enabled developers to craft games for within the app. Whether marketers will be able to capitalize on games in Messenger similarly to how they have in the past with games directly on Facebook, is still unclear.