Having Fun with Multiple Image Ads

Nowadays there are a plethora of formats and mediums available for advertisement at our fingertips. With such a variety available, it requires talent and knowledge to determine which format to use for each ad campaign. Some recent types of advertisements that are fun to use are Facebook ad carousels and Instagram gallery posts. These two formats carry an interesting blend of video and advertising concepts that can be used to create a truly unique and interesting experience. 

With image posts, the content is limited to the image and the copy provided - plain and simple. Video posts have much more flexibility and capacity but often people won’t view the whole video. When creating the video, any written content needs to be timed and balanced, because too often it shows too fast for people to read.

Galleries allow you to showcase multiple photos which greatly increases the capacity for information and variability of content in one post. They also allow people to click through at their own pace reducing the legibility issue. This ability for the user to click through at their own leisure also adds an interesting interactive element that can be played with, making it feel more like a journey, rather than just an ad experience. There are many visual ways to play with these two formats: you can separate the different slides or make them into one continuous journey. Each have benefits and choosing a format would depend on what information the ad is trying to convey.

A great example of a visual journey is the Facebook ad carousel made by Adobe Stock. In their ad carousel, they chose images with roads, rivers, canyons and other lines traveling through the images that lined up with one another, creating continuity between the various images while the actual images were diverse in subject matter. This creates a journey for your audience which is useful to get people to interact with the ad. While they didn’t use this in an educational way, it can be a great way to visualize a process such as the ordering or booking process for a product. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you can create different content on each slide to which the format of the gallery lends itself. Since each slide is already separate, users don’t necessarily expect every slide to be related, where as with a continuous video, consumers often assume the video has an overarching theme/topic and switching can be confusing for viewers. This can be a great way to convey the different services that are offered at a company. However, when doing this, definitely make sure to differentiate each slide so that the users know to click through for more information. The nice thing about Facebook ad carousel is that you can rearrange the slides to see which order works best for you. 

These ad formats aren’t exactly new, but people are finding more interesting and unique ways to utilize them. The best way to see if these formats work well for your brand is to play with them and track how they perform.