Are Facebook Carousel Ads Really The Next Golden Goose?
 
In the past year, Facebook has rolled out an unprecedented number of changes to their advertising suite. We’re particularly excited about the new carousel ad format, formerly known as multi-product ads. These new ads not only look sleek, they also perform incredibly well.
 
Carousel ads offer so many possibilities for advertisers. They offer the ability to highlight up to five products in one ad though it certainly isn’t limited to just ecommerce. You can use carousel ads to tell a story, to highlight different features of one product or highlight multiple promotions in one ad. Carousel ads allow you to be as creative as you need.
 

Click here to see a live preview of what this Facebook carousel ad looks like in the Facebook timeline.
 
Facebook is confident enough in this ad format to claim that it will lead to an increase in click-through and conversion rates. The rationale is that by having more products in one ad, the consumer will be more likely to find a reason to click. Having the ability to link to five different pages will cause conversion rates to increase. This seems intuitive enough but do these claims match real world results?
 

No… At least not as far as we can tell right now.

 
Do Carousel ads increase CTR?
We used carousel ads for a client in the health food industry. They don’t offer ecommerce but we used the ads to highlight a few recipes, a media event, and a coupon. CTR was significantly higher for carousel ads at 2.6% compared to 1.8% on regular news feed posts, almost a 50% increase! These results weren’t isolated; we saw similar results for clients in the fashion and welding industries.
 
Do Carousel ads increase conversion rate?
We recently ran a carousel ad for a client in the fashion industry. We saw conversion rates nearly identical to their news feed counterparts. So far we haven’t seen anything to suggest that carousel ads convert any better than regular news feed ads. However, that’s not saying they don’t do a great job converting.
 
Overall Facebook Carousel ads are a powerful tool for advertisers that you’ll want to test if you haven’t already. If you’d like to explore this opportunity for your brand, reach out and we’ll be there to help.