Today Facebook announced the launch of a new advertising unit called product ads, which look like they have the potential to be a real threat to Google Shopping ads.
Facebook’s product ads allows marketers to advertise multiple products at once, or even display an entire catalog of products, and target them in different ways.
Campaigns can be created targeting products to specific audiences, or Facebook’s ad tools can automatically target your products to what it finds to be the most relevant audiences.
Similar to Facebook’s existing ad units, product ads can be customized for various customer touch points — from discovery to purchase.
Product ads can be targeted for a number of different audiences, such as people who have previously visited your website or app, or targeted based on things like interests and location.
Facebook’s Threat To Google
Until now, Facebook has not offered an easy solution for marketers to advertise products and display them on desktop as well as mobile.
Google Shopping ads are one of the company’s most rapidly growing business areas right now, with ad spending going up 47% in the fourth quarter of 2014 compared to the same time the previous year.
The ability to retarget products on mobile devices has been a very lucrative feature for Google Shopping ads. With Facebook now being able to offer a similar solution it could end up taking a chunk out of the ad dollars marketers are budgeting for Google ads.
In addition, the Wall Street Journal reports that businesses can take the product feeds they already send to Google Shopping and adapt them for Facebook’s product ads without any additional work needed.
The fact that advertisers can seamlessly switch over from Google to Facebook’s product ads bodes even better for the social media giant with respect to its potential to steal ad dollars away.
Product ads are available starting today only through Facebook Marketing Partners, and will be available in Power Editor for everyone else to use over the next few weeks.
