Facebook have been fairly aggressive in claiming a greater share of ad spend over the last few years; particularly reinventing their ad units for Mobile and to be more native to their platform.
One of the most interesting ad units they’ve released in some time are the new Lead Ads.
These ads allow users to enter an advertiser’s database without having to manually enter any information. Their data is automatically pre-filled based on the fields that the advertiser includes in the ad, with the data that the user has shared with Facebook.
There’s a strong place for this ad, for a few reasons.
Facebook Lead Gen is not what it used to be
Since the effectiveness of competitions on Facebook (and competition data has always been questionable) has been almost entirely eroded in the last few years (starting with the removal of the ability to like-gate a post), there’s not been a decent way to generate leads from Facebook without taking users offsite.
Facebook users don’t want to leave Facebook
Facebook users, particularly on mobile, are reluctant to leave Facebook to external sites. This ad allows the user to interact and convert to lead directly in the ad unit.
Now is the time to use it
These sort of products tend to have the greatest response early-on, before advertisers use them in mass and reduce their effectiveness. At the Facebook CPCs, they make a lot of sense to trial and introduce new leads into your database.
You can also couple this with Custom Audiences to find similar subscribers to your existing database, and to ensure you’re only reaching new users.
We suggest offering an exclusive email-only offer, sale or voucher; or a competition.
The campaigns themselves are fairly easy to get online – you can find out more here.