Facebook today has announced that it has started testing AR based ads in News Feed and will only be accessible for users in the USA. The company said that it is adding new ways to help businesses to engage with users on mobile, encourage product discovery and drive sales online and in stores.
With AR, users can experiment with brand’s AR camera effects in just one click from the News Feed ad. Meaning, this feature will allow users to try products from the Ads using filters similar to Snapchat Filters. Facebook believes that 79% of consumers would rather watch a video to learn about a product than reading text on a page. Since creating mobile-optimized ads can get challenging at times, it is launching Video Creation Kit to make it easier for all advertisers to create mobile-first video ads.
Video Creation Kit helps advertisers create eye-catching, effective mobile video ads using existing images. The tool will enable advertisers to upload images, add overlays and logos to quickly build mobile-first video ads. Facebook also said that later this year, it will begin testing AR ads with some additional advertisers such as Sephora and others in fashion accessories, cosmetics, furniture, gaming, and entertainment. It is also planning to roll out AR ads more broadly to other industries over the course of the year.
Sam Wheatley Director of Growth Marketing, Noom, said:
We’d seen a growing need for a solution that could help us quickly and efficiently scale our video efforts on Facebook. Using the Video Creation Kit we were able to upload existing static assets and turn them into mobile-optimized videos through the use of Facebook’s ready-to-use templates. Using the videos created from this toolkit has resulted in a 77% increase in performance compared to the original static assets that ran on Facebook.