Social media giant Facebook has officially begun rolling out ads in its Stories feature around the world.
Stories, which was added to the platform a year ago and borrows heavily from Instagram Stories, will now offer advertisers additional space on Facebook to serve content.
Speaking on the launch, Facebook ANZ MD Will Easton said: “The use of Stories has risen sharply in 2018 as people embrace creating and consuming in the Stories format.
“Stories are full screen and they tend to be sound on. This creates a more immersive experience for the viewer and as an advertiser helps land your message faster.
“People are already using Stories to engage with businesses so we are excited to launch ads in Stories for Australian brands today to take advantage of this shift in mobile activity,” he added.
According to the platform, “Advertisers can now include Facebook Stories as an additional placement to News Feed or Instagram Stories ad campaigns, delivering your message in a fullscreen, immersive environment, and soon, you’ll be able to extend the reach and improve the performance of your stories ad campaigns in Messenger too.”
It added: “Facebook Stories ads support every objective that’s currently available for Instagram Stories ads, including reach, brand awareness, video views, app install, conversion, traffic and lead generation.
“Facebook’s full suite of targeting and measurement capabilities is also available for stories ads across platforms.”
News of Facebook Stories’ transition into ads was first announced in July by Facebook group industry director for ANZ Naomi Shepherd during a media briefing.
Speaking on the news Shepherd said: “From lots of our discussions with brand owners and marketers, it’s really obvious that there was a need for us to provide them with formats that were full-screen, immersive, sound-on, interactive,” she said.
“We think that these are all part of the digital age, and we think that the Stories format is probably the best example of a format that’s meeting a brand marketer’s job to be done.
“It’s also meeting a consumer’s job to be done. They want really interactive, fun-type formats.”
Yesterday, Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger left the business amid rumours they tired of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s interference in the day-to-day operations of the app.
Commenting on their exit, Zuckerberg said in a statement: “Kevin and Mike are extraordinary product leaders and Instagram reflects their combined creative talents.
“I’ve learned a lot working with them for the past six years and have really enjoyed it.”
