Meta enhances Reels ads with new features for brands

As the holiday shopping season draws near, Meta is unveiling a range of new updates to its Reels ads, designed to provide brands with enhanced options for connecting with its swiftly expanding content platform.

Collections Ads, already a fixture on Instagram, are now coming to Facebook Reels. Meta has been experimenting with this format on both platforms since October 2022 and plans to make this ad type more accessible to brands using Facebook Reels soon. By doing so, the company is aligning itself more closely with other short-form video ad choices and broadening its Reels ad capabilities.

Meta is also testing a new format, Multi-Destination Reels Carousel Ads, which allows advertisers to guide viewers to several product pages based on the images displayed in the ad. Instagram has already rolled out this feature for Carousel Ads. This initiative provides businesses with more flexibility and options for displaying products and enticing potential customers.

Meta is launching a “Swipe Left” feature for Facebook and Instagram Reels ads. This allows viewers to seamlessly navigate to learn more about the products featured in the ads. While this may require a small behavioral adjustment from users, it presents an effective means for brands to share detailed product information and engage their audience further.

Meta is actively developing new automation solutions for Reels ads within its Advantage+ suite. The company is introducing auto-generated templates for Reels promotions, helping brands optimize their creative assets into the most effective Reels formats. These enhancements offer advertisers an easy way to generate alternative ad versions through Meta’s automation tools. The new music selection tool, previously available on iOS, is now accessible to all advertisers. It enables marketers to automatically incorporate free music from Meta’s Sound Collection library, matching it to their ad content.

Meta’s Advantage+ toolset within Ads Manager integrates these latest features, providing innovative opportunities for harnessing automation in Reels advertising.

Meta is also expanding brand suitability controls to cover Facebook and Instagram Reels. This includes both the brand suitability Inventory Filter control and a third-party brand suitability verification solution in partnership with Zefr, a company that Meta has been collaborating with since March. These enhancements will offer more assurance to advertisers that their ads are not being placed alongside inappropriate content, a feature that will now extend to Reels ad placements.

Meta’s Reels feature has proven to be highly advantageous, particularly with Instagram Reels emerging as the premier choice for influencer marketing in the US in 2023. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that Meta has unveiled another update to its Reels in May, introducing augmented reality technology to Instagram Reels and Facebook Stories ads. This enhancement allows brands to connect with their target audience using more immersive AR filters, creating more engaging interactions.