The 4 Types Of Mobile Ad Creative Every Digital Marketer Should Master
There are a few facts about social media ad creatives — and especially Facebook ad creatives — that it’s important to understand before beginning the ad creative design process. Specifically, mobile-first social media ad creatives are essential to any digital marketing strategy because:
- More than 60% of U.S. social media users use mobile apps or browsers (with the most popular mobile social platforms being Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, and Snapchat, respectively).
- Facebook and Instagram lead the industry in mobile ad campaign potential; at least 90% of all Facebook ad revenue comes from mobile ad creatives, and Instagram’s revenue from mobile ad creatives is growing faster than its user base.
- Deploying social media ad creatives has become a little less expensive over the past few years, yet at the same time, the cost of getting any Facebook ad creative in front of a broad audience grew about 90% year-over-year.
The Different Types Of Mobile Ad Creatives You Need To Master
Mobile Ad Creative Type 1: Single-Image & Single Video Mobile Ad Creatives
Most Often Used For: Increasing brand awareness, boosting app traffic, and marketing for products that require demos. Because these are among the biggest goals of any mobile ad campaign, social media/Facebook ad creatives that increase brand visibility and help potential customers get to your website generally all feature similar ad creative design. That is, they feature a single-image or single-video with limited text and a link to the company’s site. They often look just like a regular post, though they appear in a sponsored position (with a sponsored tag) on non-followers’ feeds.
Research on the most effective Facebook ad creatives has shown that these types of mobile ad creative can be used together in a mobile ad campaign to different effects. That said, generally speaking, single-video ads tend to outperform single-image ads.
These types of mobile ad creative are available for use on:
- Snapchat
Mobile Ad Creative Type 2: Carousel-Type Ad Creative Designs
Most Often Used For: E-commerce sales and lead generation. Carousel-type ad creative designs feature multiple image/text/link combinations arranged so that the viewer can scroll horizontally through multiple products or pitches. Carousel ad creative designs are especially useful for showcasing an array of different products or multiple testimonials. Moreover, these types of mobile ad creative are unique in that some platforms allow for dynamic sorting that shows different carousel views to different users depending on their purchase and search history.
That said, even without dynamic sorting, carousel-type social media ad creatives are ideal for mobilizing viewers to make a purchase (generating about 10x more sales than single-image ad creative designs for products). Plus, carousel-type ad creative designs cost as much as 30% less than single-image ad creative designs — even for Facebook ad creatives.
These types of mobile ad creative are available for use on:
Mobile Ad Creative Type 3: Collection-Based Social Media Ad Creatives
Most Often Used For: Optimizing sales by creating shoppable lookbooks. There are two types of collection-based ad creative design: shoppable static image posts (like those on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat) and video ads that include direct links to multiple products (on Facebook and Snapchat). Collection-based social media ad creatives are something of a “megatrend” among current mobile advertising trends, with multiple platforms fighting to find the most compelling way to implement shoppable links into ad creative designs. Overall, these types of mobile ad creative should outperform single-image, single-video, and carousel-type ad creative designs because they bring together the best elements of each of those approaches. That said, these are the newest type of mobile ad creative, so there isn’t much information about their best uses or cost/efficacy compared to other ad creative designs.
These types of mobile ad creative are available for use on:
- Snapchat
Mobile Ad Creative Type 4: Ad Creative Designs For Ads For Mobile Apps
Most Often Used For: Mobile ad campaigns for mobile apps; to boost app downloads. App developers face some unique challenges when it comes to designing successful mobile ad creatives. That’s because the journey an interested ad-viewer follows to complete the app download process often involves more steps (clicks) than the purchase journey for other types of products/services advertised via social media (especially Facebook) ad creatives.
📚 10 Tips For Designing Highly Effective Mobile Ad Creatives
Generally speaking, the fewer clicks there are in your app download funnel, the more likely a consumer will follow through with the download process. That’s why some social media platforms have launched app install ad creative designs. These types of mobile ad creative bypass the other steps in the traditional download process, leading to an app install without navigating away from whatever platform the user is on.
These types of mobile ad creative are available for use on:
- Snapchat
Ad Fatigue & Its Impact On Effective Mobile Ad Creative Design
Each type of mobile ad creative is unique in its approach to user engagement. That said, the most important element of ad creative design remains the same regardless of the scale or specific types used in any mobile ad campaign. That is, when it comes to designing effective social media (and especially Facebook) ad creatives, the most universal and persistent mobile advertising trends involve combatting ad fatigue.
Because social media platforms have a fairly consistent (or declining) user base, social media ad creatives are shown repeatedly to the same targeted users. People get tired of seeing the same mobile ad creatives over and over again, so even well-designed, mobile-first social media ad creatives see a predictable decline in performance the longer they run. That’s why one of the most important (yet most overlooked) elements of any mobile ad creative is a plan to regularly refresh the ad creative design itself.
