Facebook launches Canvas, an immersive mobile ad experience

Facebook today announced the international release of Canvas, a new full-screen, immersive mobile ad experience that loads nearly instantaneously when someone taps on a News Feed ad. Canvas is available to advertisers around the world starting today.

Facebook has built Canvas in collaboration with brands and agencies to achieve any objective by giving them a fully customisable space on which to build multimedia stories. Advertisers can use a mix of video, still images, text and call-to-action buttons to build beautiful and effective brand and product experiences on mobile.

Facebook has invested in engaging experiences like video and the carousel format to empower advertisers with more creative space to share their brand and products on mobile. But the website that opens after someone clicks on an ad is often slow to load and not always optimised for mobile, creating a disjointed and frustrating experience for people. And website pages are only growing in file size. In 2015, the average website page was three times bigger than it was in 2011, and slow load times are a top reason people abandon a website.

These trends tell us that advertisers need a better way to share information after people click on their ad, and the information offered after someone clicks needs to load quickly, look beautiful on mobile and allow people to take action easily.

Canvas: a better way to tell a brand story

Within a Canvas, people can move through digital stories easily. They can swipe through a carousel of images, tilt to view panoramic images and zoom in to view images in detail, making the Canvas experience immersive and engaging in a way that mobile sites aren’t. And Canvas uses the same technology that makes photos and videos load quickly on Facebook, so it loads as much as 10 times faster than the standard mobile web.

Burberry used Canvas to build a mobile-friendly and interactive holiday gift lookbook.

“We made the creative community a priority when we designed and built Canvas. It’s a product that represents our commitment to creative craft and delivering the best mobile experience for businesses and people,” said Chris Jones, Head of Creative Technology, Facebook Creative Shop.

Canvas is a mobile-only experience and works on both Android and iOS. Advertisers with access to Power Editor can start creating Canvases now.

How advertisers are using Canvas

Canvases are easy to create and are already helping advertisers achieve their goals, whether they want to strengthen their brand or promote products. Here’s how a few brands are using Canvas to connect with people on mobile and drive their goals.

Coca Cola built a Canvas that featured the newly launched special series of aluminium bottle. They reached nearly 16 million people and had an average view time of 18 seconds.

Asus created a Canvas with the theme “end bad gifts” during the 2015 holiday shopping season. They saw a 42 per cent increase in clicks on their ad, and people who clicked into their Canvas spent an average of 12 seconds viewing the content. Plus, 70 per cent of the people who clicked on the Canvas ad went to the Asus website after exploring the Canvas.

L’Occitane created a Canvas that told people more about how they source ingredients and how their products work. The Canvas resulted in an 11 per cent increase in ad recall compared to link ads alone.

Lowe’s wanted to connect with aspirational young homeowners about easy and trendy home do-it-yourself projects. On average people spent 28 seconds exploring their Canvas.

The Canvas Builder tool makes it easy for anyone to create a Canvas. The tool is available to advertisers in both Power Editor and the Publishing Tools tab on their Page.