With the addition of TikTok as one of our platform offerings this year, we can’t help but pay attention to the latest news on Instagram and Facebook Reels. We find it super important to keep a pulse on what Meta is doing to match its quickly evolving competitor.
Did you know that watching video is half of the time spent on Facebook and Instagram? Users love consuming video content and we see the gap growing between the performance of video ads vs statics and GIFs.
We can only assume that Instagram Reels has been serving Meta well, as they have begun rolling out the Reels placement to Facebook feeds across North America. With this advancement, Facebook will be rolling out two new ad placements within Facebook Reels.
- Overlay Ads. These will basically serve as little display ads over Reels content. These will be available in Banner Ads and Sticker Ads. You may already see this placement as an option in your Ads Manager.
What is most interesting about this placement is that creators have the ability to place Sticker Ads wherever they want on their content. They are incentivized to do so because they will earn a portion of the ad revenue from that placement.
- Fully immersive 9:16 videos that appear in between Reels. Think of the ad experience on TikTok, but on Facebook. Plus side to this: you are getting more bang for your buck with your 9:16 creative as more of these placements become available. (Maybe. We don’t know how valuable these placements are yet!) This placement is not rolled out for all Advertisers yet, but will be in the coming months.
You can opt-in to Overlay Ads by selecting ‘Facebook overlay ads in Reels’ under ‘Reels Overlay’ in Ads Manager Placements. Per usual, we recommend a thorough test. Isolate this placement and test your new Overlay Ads vs your evergreen to see what type of delivery and performance you can achieve.