Millions of businesses launch millions of Facebook ads every day. Fascinating, isn’t it?

One study claims that 85% of Facebook advertisers consider their ads successful.

So here’s the question: How do they do that? The answer is, no one knows.

What we know for sure is that every business has a special strategy when it comes to Facebook advertising.

Also, we know that every Facebook strategy involves choosing the right Facebook ad formats!

The Complete List of Facebook Ad Formats

We’ve counted fifteen Facebook ad formats that you can make a part of your marketing strategy.

Your choice depends on many things, such as your marketing objective, audience, ad content, and even personal preferences.

Let’s cut to the chase and review all the Facebook ad formats one by one.

Video Ads

Facebook video ads were launched in 2014.

Today, brands publish an average of nearly seven video posts on Facebook every month.

There are a lot of video formats for Facebook ads:

• Stories
• Vertical video
• Short video
• In-stream video
• Live streaming video
• 360-degree video

If you want to know how to pick the best Facebook video ad format, read the beginner’s guide on our blog. 

Before creating your ads, read about Facebook video ad best practices to make sure you do everything right.

Then check out examples of Facebook video ads by the world’s top brands.

Photo Ads

Image ads are the most widespread format of Facebook ads.

If you compare video ads versus image ads on Facebook, you’ll see that photo advertising is still in the game despite the growing popularity of video.

Stories

Stories ads are one of the best video formats for Facebook ads. They allow advertisers to provide users with fast, immersive, authentic, and entertaining shopping experiences.

The cool thing about Stories ads is that you can buy and run them not only on Instagram but on Facebook, WhatsApp, and Messenger.

According to Facebook:

• over 4 million advertisers use Stories every month
• people create over 500 million Stories every day
• businesses post 1 in 3 of the most viewed Instagram Stories
• there are over 1 billion Stories posted across all Facebook platforms every day

Stories have tremendous potential for your business, especially when posted on different Facebook placements at the same time.

In Facebook Marketing Science Studies 2018, data from 17 campaigns show that Facebook Stories create a cost-efficient brand lift together with Instagram Stories and the Facebook Feed.

Messenger

More than 1.3 billion users send over 20 billion messages on Messenger every month. Messenger ads are one of the best Facebook mobile ad formats you can use.

Messenger ads are divided into four major types:

1. Messenger inbox ads are displayed in the Chats tab. After people click on this type of Messenger ad, the platform drives them to one of three places: a website, mobile app, or Messenger conversation.
2. Messenger Stories ads are a great way to quickly get people interested in your products or services.
3. Click to Messenger ads allow businesses to target lots of people at once and later interact with each of them personally on Messenger.
4. Sponsored messages are the best way to retarget your Messenger audience. These are targeted ads sent to users who have already interacted with you on Messenger.

To launch any of these Messenger ad types, go to Ads Manager and pick the Messages objective.

Collection

Collection ads are grid-like posts where you can add one major video or image plus up to four images above it. If you advertise an online store, hotel, or airline, you should give Collection ads a try.

The Collection ad format on Facebook has four different templates: 

1. Instant Customer Acquisition is perfect for driving people to a landing page.
2. Instant Lookbook is optimal for demonstrating items from product catalogs.
3. Instant Storytelling is used for promoting a business in an entertaining way.
4. Instant Storefront looks like a storefront for an online store.

Powered by Instant Experience, Facebook Collection ads allow businesses to show viewers a few products simultaneously right in Facebook and Instagram, get those viewers interested, and successfully drive them to a website or mobile app.

Carousel

Carousel ads are posts that have the form of a merry-go-round.

Every Carousel ad includes up to ten videos or images.

The Facebook Carousel ad format is a great option if you want to:

• show multiple products
• highlight features of one product or service
• create a step-by-step story about your business

Run an e-commerce business? You should definitely launch some Carousel ads.

Dynamic Ads

Dynamic ads are generated automatically to show the right products to the right audience.

To set up Dynamic ads, you need to do three things:

1. Install a Facebook Pixel for your website or the Facebook SDK for your mobile app. The Facebook Pixel and SDK are tracking instruments that allow you to monitor your ad performance accurately and in detail.
2. Register a Facebook Business Manager account.
3. Add a product catalog to Business Manager and create suitable product sets.

If you advertise a real estate, travel, or automotive company, take advantage of Dynamic ads developed specifically for these industries.

Lead Ads

Lead ads are the best Facebook ad format for lead generation.

These are prebuilt forms that allow businesses to get users’ contact information without leaving Facebook. The coolest part is that a Lead ad form is fully customizable. 

Depending on your needs, you can use prefilled fields to ask for:

• Contact information: email, first and last name, phone number, etc.
• Demographics: date of birth, gender, relationship status, etc.
• Work information: job title, work email, company name, work phone number

Additionally, you can ask custom short-form and multiple-choice questions or even schedule an appointment. Before launching Lead Generation ads, make sure you ask questions that don’t violate Facebook policies.

Automated Ads

Automated ads are personalized ads created by Facebook based on information about your business

To get started with Automated ads, go to your Facebook Page and choose:

• your business category
• the ways you do business
• the methods you use to communicate with your customers
• common interests shared by your customers

After you do that, Facebook will offer you a marketing objective that suits your business best, suggest content for your ads (you can create up to six versions for a single Automated ad), and recommend the right audience and budget.

Once Automated ads are launched, Facebook sends notifications about your ad performance to let you know how your ad campaign is going and how you can improve it to get better results.

Slideshow Ads

Slideshow ads are the golden middle between photo and video ads.

As a matter of fact, these are slideshows. However, Facebook calls them video-like ads because they use motion, sound, and text to tell a compelling story. 

For your Slideshow ads, you can opt for free stock images and music as well as existing video. This ad format is for you if you want to test something new aside from traditional photo ads but don’t have much time or money to create video ads.

Or you can test our artificial intelligence engine and make high-quality video ads with an image-sized budget.

Offer Ads

Offer ads allow your business to make special offers to your Facebook audience during sales. Every Offer ad has an expiration date, two ways of redemption (online and in-store), and a call-to-action button.

There are four types of offers you can use:

• Discount percentage
• Discount amount
• Buy X get Y discount
• Spend X get Y off

Additionally, you can add promo codes and privacy policies if necessary.

Event Response Ads

Event Response ads, or Event ads, are used to promote an event on Facebook.

You can run this ad format for two purposes:

1. To get more event responses using the Engagement marketing objective
2. To sell more tickets using the Conversions or Traffic marketing objectives.

Alternatively, you can launch Event ads directly from your Page without going to Ads Manager.

Post Engagement Ads

Post Engagement ads allow you to promote any of your News Feed posts and get more impressions, likes, and shares for them. This ad format is the simplest way to get people to notice your business on Facebook.

To run Post Engagements, you don’t have to use Ads Manager. All you need to do is find a post you want to promote and click the Boost button below it to launch your promotion.

Page Like Ads

Page Like ads are the best format for Facebook ads if you want to boost the popularity of your Facebook Page as soon as possible.

Go to your Page, click Promote in the left-hand column, and select Promote Your Page.

Enhance Your Ad Format with Video

Thanks for reading our Facebook ad formats guide!

Have you already discovered the ad formats you’d like to test for your Facebook marketing? What about amazing Facebook video ads made automatically?

Contact us to test our artificial intelligence platform!