Facebook recently announced ‘Instant Articles’ which loads articles at a quicker pace than the usual and publishers are already liking it as it’s increasing their readers. As opposed to the old format, where the article would consume time to load thus leaving the publishers upset.
Facebook has now made another announcement about Canvas. Canvas is an ad platform which will be confined only to the boundaries of Facebook. Furthermore, it is a mobile-only experience which will work on both Android and iOS. Clearly, Facebook is leveraging their audience and that too on the most-used platform which is Mobile. Afterall, majority of the people when online are online only on select services like Facebook, WhatsApp, etc.
The question is will Canvas act as the advertisement which appears while watching TV (They are either ignored or muted.) Well, we don’t think so. Previously, the way ads were displayed on mobile were in a form of single caraousel which appears in the news feed. We generally tend to skip or just scroll through them. Facebook saw this as a problem as it resulted in less Click-Through-Rate. Along with it, there was an existing problem of the content loading slowly. Canvas opens from Facebook ads which will be placed in the News Feed. They will provide a full-screen rich experience of content. Brands can use a mix of images, video, text and Call-To-Action buttons to invoke response.
What differentiates Canvas from the existing ads is that it will be story-telling with your participation. The ads can be made in the most engaging manner where the user can swipe through a carousel of images, tilt to view panoramic views and zoom in detail to view the images. Thus, making the experience informative yet appealing for the user. Facebook uses a technology which helps them load images and photos 10x faster than the standard mobile web, it uses the same technology for Canvas.
When it comes to Canvas, advertisers can measure their Return-On-Investment. Well, there’s one thing to say that advertisers have now gotten a fresh platform to experiment. They can now promote their product to netizens or audience with a different demographics.
