This post originally appeared on Single Grain, a growth marketing agency focused on scaling customer acquisition.
Facebook Ads is always coming out with new and exciting ways to interact with your customers and drive both engagement and conversions. Image carousel ads and lead ads are two strong examples of this, each of which serves different purposes for marketers. With image carousel ads, you can tell a story or feature multiple products; lead ads are designed to get as much lead information as possible.
Facebook Canvas is the newest feature that has just recently been mass-rolled out to businesses and advertisers, and it’s definitely different from what we’re used to.
In this post, we’re going to look at what Facebook Canvas is, how it can be used, why you should use it, how to create it, and more.
What is Facebook Canvas?
Straight from the mouth of Facebook: “Canvas is an immersive and expressive experience on Facebook for businesses to tell their stories and showcase their products.”
In other words, it’s a type of interactive content that businesses can create. One option, for example, features an image with a tag that says “Tap to Open.” Once users click on it, the picture will take them to a full-screen ad which has multiple slides that they can scroll through. Each screen, if you choose, can have a clickable link to take users to your site, and you can have a very simple call to action like “click to shop now.”
Canvas is designed to help businesses tell a narrative that consumers will enjoy and that is also productive for their business. They’re also highly customizable.
Canvases can be viewed only by users who are actively using their mobile devices and works on both iOS and Android.
Until recently, only a few big name brands, such as Universal Studios, Wendy’s, and Target, had access to Facebook Canvas while it was in beta testing.
Why Use Facebook Canvas?
Facebook Canvas posts and ads are different, and they’re interactive. They’re different from any other type of content we currently see on Facebook, which makes them more interesting to users.
A few months ago, I saw a Facebook Canvas ad from Universal, and even though I didn’t know what it was at the time, it caught my attention enough that I took a screenshot of it to research later. That screenshot is pictured below:
Canvas is currently a mobile-only experience and is designed for users to continue to swipe through what I call “pages” or slides of content within a single canvas (much like scrolling down in an article, which takes you away from your Newsfeed but keeps you within the Facebook app). This is significant because:
- 78% of Facebook Advertising revenue comes from mobile ads.
- Out of the estimated 9 billion monthly users currently on Facebook, 1.19 billion access this platform on their mobile devices, with 581 million of those users being mobile-only users.
- 75% of Facebook’s video views come from mobile.
These statistics show us that mobile usage is increasing, and that finding new ways to connect with mobile users can help businesses and the success of Facebook Ads.
Facebook Canvas also allows us to add more segments of information (text, images, videos, and CTAs) on a single post or ad, making them even more valuable. You can highlight more products, showcase more use cases of a single product, or use Canvas to tell a narrative that will keep your audience engaged and help build brand rapport.
How to Create Facebook Canvases
Creating Facebook Canvases is actually easier than I’d thought it would be; like all of Facebook, the creation process is user-friendly and really simple.
There are a ton of options to choose from, allowing you to customize almost every single aspect of the Canvas. This can be overwhelming at first, but remember, you can always create multiple canvases and test them to see what works best for you.
This tutorial will show where to access the canvas builder, how to use the canvas builder to create new canvases, an overview of different visual options, recommended image specs, and how to run campaigns with completed canvases.
Where to Find Canvas
Facebook Canvas is now available to just about everyone through Power Editor. To access Canvas through Power Editor, you’ll need to create a new ad at the actual ad level. Choose an ad with an image or video.
Below the website URL you’ll see the option to choose a canvas. You can create one by clicking on the + next to it.
Once a canvas has been built in Power Editor, the completed canvas is accessible through your Page’s publishing tools and composer for you to use.
If you’re not a fan of Power Editor and don’t want to use it to create a canvas, you can request to have access to the Canvas Builder from your Page. Some users may have it already.
To find Canvas from your Page, go to Publishing Tools.
From there, scroll down until you see Canvas, if you have access to it.
You can request access here if you don’t have it already.
Creating the “Home Page” of Your Canvas
For this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to create a Canvas from the Page manager, but the builder looks like same both there and in Power Editor.
Again, to find Canvas from your Page, go to Publishing Tools, and then scroll down to Canvas.
From here you’ll be able to view your current and already-created Canvases, and you’ll be able to create new ones by clicking on the blue “+Create” button in the top right hand corner.
This will open the Canvas builder, where you’ll immediately be prompted to name your Canvas.
You then select a theme for your Canvas. You can choose a white, black, or custom theme.
The theme determines how the bottom of the canvas will look. The theme you choose will be the background color of the non-image space.
Continue reading %What Is Facebook Canvas: A Complete Guide%
by Eric Siu via SitePoint
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