Ad Formats for Social Media Guide
Did you know that most people will spend around 28% of their time using social media? Did you also know that 2.38 billion people are active on Facebook each month or that there are over 500 million users on Instagram? There are also 74% of marketers who invested in social media marketing, which has social advertising. 70% of businesses stated that they could generate leads on social media and 58% of marketers stated that social media has helped to boost their sales.
There is so much that is related to social media advertising that can prove the importance and impact that it has for many businesses. Additionally, the stats can show the impressive reach and effectiveness of social media advertising, and using this tactic can allow you to grow your leads. You can engage and communicate with your customers and potential customers directly on the platform while you are building relationships with them.
The best part is that social media advertising is a great cost-effective way to get your business out there compared to more traditional advertising. Social media ads allow you to set up a specific budget and then remove or add from the amount for each social platform that you plan to use.
Social media platforms are an excellent way for you to advertise to those who are interested in your business. When you look at examples of social media ads, you are going to see the types of ads that you can create that will catch the eye of your audience.
Keep reading to look at the most popular social media platforms and the types of examples of social media ads that can get offered to your business.
Examples of Facebook Ads
Let’s start with Facebook ads. Facebook is one of the most popular social media platforms out there for advertising. It is the 2nd most famous company when it comes to spending on digital ads. The ads on Facebook are a perfect way to help you show off your services or products while you build up your brand.
69% of adults are going to be using Facebook, even though most of the users on this platform are between 25 years old and 34 years old. Facebook has one of the widest ranges of active users than any other social media platform out there. That is including seniors and teens. 62% of seniors are over the age of 65.
Because Facebook ads will let you reach your audience members who have not liked your page, and that is one reason why you can see that this platform is quite famous for advertising. You can reach the largest population of the audience compared to other types of social media platforms.
Facebook ads are a type of art and science, and looking at the examples of Facebook ads is going to be one of the ways that you can learn how to create your own. It can help you to get the creative wheels turning and may help you to come up with original ideas. While the organic reach is starting to decline, knowing how you can create a more effective ad for Facebook is going to be very important less for you.
It cannot get guaranteed that posting to your Facebook business page is going to make sure that your followers see what you are posting. If you decide to put money on the content, then you will need to make sure that all of your efforts are going to pay off.
You should find out what works for other brands before you head off to create your ads for Facebook. Let’s take a look at some Facebook ad formats.
Image Ads
One of the most common types of ads on Facebook is image ads. These ads are straightforward, but they are still useful when it comes to reaching the right type of people. Below is an example of an image ad.
If anything is right, then you should know that just about every person on the planet hates pointless meetings. Slack uses a practical but straightforward image ad of what it would feel like to sit in 25% fewer meetings, which shows it as being a great communications platform.
Additionally, the ad takes full advantage of Internet imagery, and it is playful as it shows a meme-styled unicorn to make the product a relatable thing. Everything got well-positioned in the ad for a call to action. It asks the user to sign up based on the information, which is not a very effective strategy.
It is an excellent example of how work focused communication tools can get advertised sufficiently on a social media platform and how even the most practical app or product can get made to look much more fun.
This ad from Slack is just a straightforward example of what you could expect when it comes to an image ad on Facebook.
Video Ads
An excellent form of paid social media ads is video ads. The ads can get your users engaged, and that makes them focus on your ads. It works well to provide much information quickly.
The stop motion type of ad is going to catch users’ attention as it will stand out in the news feed because most videos are often of people. The style of video is most likely expensive, and it is going to be much more expensive to produce than just filing a product video. Try the World has been around for a long time, and they have tested a lot of different types of styles when it comes to video ads. They have continued to invest in this video style means that these ads are what is working best for them.
Carousel Ads
If you want to show off different products, then a carousel ad is a great way to go. You can have a lot of different slides that you can add product photos so that the audience can slide through them to look at the options that you offer. You can use a single large image and then span it across different slides. Below is an example of a carousel ad.
Sky has managed to use many multi-product ads to provide the audience with additional insights into different special offers that they often run. You can use ads like this to market a lot of different products at once or even provide more information on your products.
Ad Examples for Twitter
Twitter is another excellent platform that can help you to advertise to your audience. Twitter is excellent, especially if you are looking to target young to middle-aged adults with social media ads for your business. The reason why is 22% of adults are using Twitter. 26% of users are going to be between 30 years old and 49 years old, while 38% of the users are between 18 years old and 29 years old. There are three main ad formats that you can use on Twitter to advertise your products or services.
Promoted Tweets
A promoted tweet is going to one of the most popular ads that you are going to see on Twitter. They will often have a video or photo, and it will share information that is relevant to the viewers. A promoted tweet will look like a regular tweet, and the only difference is that advertisers are going to pay to display the content to those who are not following them on Twitter.
Just like your average tweets, these ads can be commented on, liked, and even retweeted, but they are going to get labeled as an ad, and they will always say it got promoted on the bottom left-hand side. Promoted tweets like this one from Subway are going to appear in the timelines for targeted users. It appears at the top of search results, on user-profiles, and also on the desktop and mobile apps for Twitter.
Promoted Accounts
A promoted account is an excellent way for you to get your business to connect with people who might want to start following your business on Twitter. These ad types are an effective yet simple way to help people find your business account.
These ad types typically get used to increase followers as they suggest interesting and new accounts of people or businesses on Twitter. When the number of followers you have starts to go up, the engagement on Twitter will go up too. However, the main goal of “referral accounts” is to attract more followers based on who your target audience is. Promoting your account will display your username in the “Who Follows” section of other users’ homepages.
The following is an example of the “Following” section, with recommended accounts at the top:
Promote trend
Twitter users usually use hashtags on the website.
You can promote hashtags to build brand awareness and make them use your hashtags. That is also an excellent way for users to click on topic tags to learn about the topic and learn more about your business.
Purchase promotion trends will send your sponsored topics or specific hashtags at the top of the list of trending topics. Even though the buying promotion trends make your subject one of the most discussed topics on Twitter at any time, it may be one of the most expensive advertising options on Twitter.
The image that is below will show the trend list that is found on your Twitter feed. The promoted trend is going to #TargetRun. It is displayed at the top of the trend list and is marked as “promoted.” Interestingly, the “promotional trend” is also very timely, as Target tries to take advantage of holiday shoppers by promoting their sales:
This Twitter ad example shows the promotion trend.
It’s important to note that unless you have a sufficient budget, you may not be able to use promotional trends. It’s nice to know that this option is out there, but it is best to focus on the other ad options to get the most out of your Twitter ad budget.
Ad Example for Instagram
Instagram advertising is an extremely effective way to acquire new potential customers. If you target the younger generation, Instagram is the ideal choice. That is because 75% of young people aged 18-24 use the platform, while 57% of young people aged 25-29 use the platform. At the same time, only 8% of people over 65 are on the platform.
These are visual advertisements that attract your audience and make them understand your brand.
Let’s dive into some examples of social media ads available for various Instagram ads.
Image Ads
Photo advertising is a great way to attract viewers and make them interested in products or services. That is an essential advertising format that can attract the attention of the audience. Let’s look at an example of an Instagram ad using photo ads.
These photos are the most common type of advertising on Instagram because photo-sharing is the most prominent feature of the platform. Photo sharing options used to be just a way for Instagram account holders to share pictures of their choice with people they follow or through Instagram. Of course, today, the situation has changed, and people are using photos to promote products, services, brands, events, and more.
Image ads need content related to the advertised content. That can provide audiences with more information about products/services, brands and tags of suspected persons, and creative headlines for related hashtags, so that target audiences can find a better way of publishing their posts fast.
Brands and influencers use image ads very generously, so their accounts mainly get filled with image content for promotion.
Video Ads
Video advertising is viral on Instagram. These ads will automatically play as the user scrolls. That is a great way to show your products or services more deeply to the audience.
There are a lot of brands out there right now that have created video ads for digital media due to them having a much higher viewer rate than other platforms. Instagram will allow between 30 seconds to 60 seconds videos to get added so that all video content will get altered, or you may post a teaser to the ad or the actual ad itself. If you decide that you are going to add a teaser, then it can be linked to another video platform such as YouTube for the customer to see the ad. A video ad is a captivating and creative way that works well due to having a much larger audience, and the views can be tripled in just minutes if the promotion has gotten done correctly.
Instagram Stories Ads
Adding your ads to Instagram Stories means that it will appear when a person starts to click through the stories of people they have followed.
Ads like these are a super simple way to reach people while they are browsing through posts. Instagram stories are a popular feature of Instagram. Nearly 80% of active users on Instagram post stories at least 2-3 times a week. There are also a large number of users who publish stories regularly, which means that much traffic gets generated through the stories. Therefore, story ads are all about smart positioning and placement.
Story ads are usually displayed when users switch between stories in two different accounts. These ads are backlinked through the “swipe up” option to return to the brand profile or website. That is a great way to redirect users to branded pages and content.
Story ads only appear a few seconds before the next story and cannot be revisited once they disappear. That may be the only disadvantage of this option. However, most users know this, so they are more likely to “swipe” if they are curious. We have listed some impressive Instagram Story ads to inspire you.
Carousel Ads
Similar to the carousel ads on Facebook, the ones on Instagram will allow you to show your audience multiple products. These types of ads are perfect to highlight or promote advantages of the product and the product itself. If only one photo or video is not performing well, carousel ads are an advantageous option. These types of Instagram ads allow users to swipe between 3-4 pictures to promote the same ad, but they can stay on the same post for a longer time. If multiple photos get promoted, the carousel ads can also get sponsored ads.
Similarly, backlinks can get made, which is very useful for brands trying to sell new products or services. Brands can split the content and get more information, instead of storing all the information in a single photo/video, so that viewers have much better ideas.
Ad Examples for LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a social media platform that is great to get views from business professionals. Whether you are posting videos on LinkedIn or just posting ads, you can use it to connect with people and attract professionals.
Your LinkedIn ads allow you to connect with new friends who don’t follow your social media business. This professional network is also useful for finding new leads for companies like yours. LinkedIn text ads are an intuitive self-service ad format that allows you to create, manage and optimize custom campaigns in minutes easily. With text ads, you can target a budget that fits you, attract an advanced professional audience, and attract high-quality potential customers for your business.
It’s no secret that LinkedIn is a professional network – it means you might want to use more formal, business, and career-related ads on the platform. That also means that the demographics on LinkedIn that you want to target include current or upcoming staff.
The platform has more than 660 million LinkedIn users, and 37% of adults aged 30-49 in the United States use the platform. In terms of students and college graduates, it gets said that 51% of American college graduates are using the platform.
Let’s take a look at three paid social media ads that can get used on LinkedIn.
Sponsored Content
Sponsored content is the most common advertising format you will see on LinkedIn. These ads will appear in the feed like all other LinkedIn posts. Since this type of advertisement is placed directly in the user’s news feed, it will naturally attract more users. You can use more text and larger images to attract users to click through to your landing page or increase brand awareness. Let’s look at an example of a social media ad for sponsored content ads.
If you have a portion of the content, or want to attract people to blog posts, then using sponsored/direct sponsored content is an effective method. In “sponsored content” ads, you can use pictures, videos, or image carousels for advertising.
Sponsored InMail
Sponsoring InMail is a great way to convey information directly to the audience.
This sponsored content gets displayed in the user’s LinkedIn inbox. When using sponsored InMail, make sure that your message gets delivered to your audience, rather than expecting them to see your ad in their feed. Users can view sponsor InMail emails on all devices. By sending personalized, private messages to their LinkedIn inbox, you can attract more potential customers and attract your target audience. Sponsored InMail emails include custom greetings, call-to-action-buttons, body text, and the ability to add links to the body of the email. These messages get purchased at a cost-per-send. That means that you will pay per unit for each message sent. This advertising format is the same as regular InMail, displayed in the message center.
Since you want to send a direct message to LinkedIn users in your target audience, this ad format is highly personalized. That can significantly help your potential customers. There is also 100% deliverability. LinkedIn only sends sponsored InMail to the user when the user is online. Therefore, it will get placed at the top of its inbox. If you want to contact others directly via email, sponsoring InMail is the right choice.
Text Ads
LinkedIn text ads are an easy way to advertise to potential customers. When viewed on a desktop computer, these ads will appear on the sidebar of the LinkedIn homepage. They are simple ads that contain a small photo and a paragraph of text.
These types of ads are very similar to Google/Bing search ads. You can create multiple ad variations for each campaign, so you can quickly test and copy the best images. It’s important to note that these ads are only available on desktop computers and appear on the right side of the news feed. You can use the cost-per-click model or the cost-per-thousand impressions model. There are some significant differences between text ads and sponsored content. If you want to run a quick campaign that is easy to set up and manage, text ads are the right ad format for you. These ads are also beneficial for brand awareness. That is because the CPM of text ads is generally lower than other LinkedIn ad formats.
Looking to Create Effective Ads for Social Media?
After looking at all these social media advertising examples, you can see the possibility of waiting for business development. You can use multiple advertising options to help your company attract new friends and grow. When it comes to paid social advertising, it will consistently change. If you want to make a real go of this as a paid marketer, then you will have to respond to new strategies, channels and formats frequently. Start by planning a strategy to create the next social media ad.
