Online sellers rejoice! Facebook is releasing a new ad format and reporting metric to help track sales. Collection is a new, more engaging ad format which allows advertisers to display videos, product image and Canvas-style elements.

“Collection is, at its core, a new ad experience that we’ve built specifically for news feed, to drive product discovery and sales through an engaging format in a fast-loading shopping experience,”
– Maz Sharafi, Facebook’s director of product marketing

As you can see, Collections will showcase videos or photos as well as related products. Advertisers can choose which related products to display, or let Facebook decide based on performance and popularity, as well as based on which products would appeal more to the user viewing the ad.
Once a user clicks on the ad, they will be led to a catalogue where they can view more products. Since these product catalogues are hosted on Facebook, they will have quick load times, just like Facebook’s Instant Articles. Once a user clicks on a product they like, they will then be redirected to the advertiser’s website or mobile app to complete the purchase.

With the release of the new ad format, Facebook is also reevaluating their reporting for immersive types of ads. They will be introducing the metric of Outbound Clicks, set to measure the number of clicks from product catalogue to website or mobile app.

Will you be testing out this new ad format?