Meta announced a slew of product updates which will increase the ad load on Instagram, including the launch of two new ad slots, allowing advertisers to run ads on the Explore home page and in profile feeds and utilising improved AI technology.
In a blog post, the company announced it’s globally testing new ways for companies to advertise with its short-form video format Reels.
Meta said they were launching an initial test of four-to-10-second skippable videos that play after a Reel ends. Reels are meant to loop, so once the ad finishes the video will repeat.
Meta said these “post-loop” advertisements will run specifically on Facebook starting out, but the system can easily transfer to Instagram if it proves successful.
Meta will also start testing ads that will run horizontally at the bottom of Facebook Reels, which will include between two to 10 scrollable images.
With Instagram, Meta wrote that it’s increasing the number of ads in the Explore tab, which would make sponsored posts appear inside the mosaic of images within different subject trends. Previously, ads only showed up on the Explore feed.
The social media giant also mentioned it’s testing ads in some prolific user feeds once a user clicks on a post on the user’s profile page.
Meta has also improved its AI to deliver multi-advertiser ads. Now when a person engages with an ad, Instagram will deliver ads underneath that its machine learning think may be of interest.
Meta said: "We've found that adding multi-advertiser contextual ads to existing Instagram feed ads campaigns outperformed running campaigns for the Purchase outcome compared to those that did not include multi-advertiser ads."
These additional ad units are assumed to help boost the company's ability to pull in revenue, after the company's first-ever quarterly revenue decline in Q2, shortly after its first decline in daily active users.
While Meta's revenue dropped only 1% in Q2, from $29.07 billion in the second quarter of 2021 to $28.82 billion in Q2 2022, Meta worried investors with a troubling Q3 forecast.
The company said it saw third-quarter revenue potentially declining between 2% and 11% year-over-year to somewhere in the range of $26 billion to $28.5 billion.
Have something to say on this? Share your views in the comments section below. Or if you have a news story or tip-off, drop us a line at adnews@yaffa.com.au
Sign up to the AdNews newsletter, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for breaking stories and campaigns throughout the day.