Facebook announce their Dynamic Ads are coming to Instagram [@SmartInsights Alert]

Dynamic ads can now feature new services and are available on Instagram plus new Custom Audience targeting options

Importance: [rating=4] For Retailers and Travel marketers who can feature products and [rating=5] for all who use Custom Audiences which are also updated

Recommended Source: Facebook blog launch commentary

We first featured Facebook's launch of Dynamic Product ads in February 2015. They have proved popular with retailers with Facebook reporting that, to date, more than 2.5 billion unique products have been uploaded to Facebook.

Now Facebook has changed what it used to call 'Dynamic Product Adverts' to just 'Dynamic adverts' as they are altering them so they can feature more than just your traditional 'products' like shoes, computers or books.

Dynamic ads feature things that users are likely interested in after viewing them on a website or adding them to their basket, so they are essentially a form of remarketing or retargeting, where the products people were browsing get re-advertised to them in Facebook.

They are dynamic, in that, the exact products you were interested in are featured front and centre. So if you were on an e-commerce fashion site browsing a certain style of dresses, those dresses would appear in a carousel on Facebook, reminding you that you were interested and perhaps tempting you to buy.

It's a great way to effectively target mobile users with exactly what they are likely to purchase, so is particularly effective at generating that all important ROI. Facebook have noticed the popularity of the advertising format, so have expanded so it can feature new kinds of products and are extending it to Instagram as well.

Good news for travel businesses

The new Dynamic ads let businesses in the travel sector target users based on location and travel dates. So if someone has been on your site looking at hotels for the 20-28th of August in Paris, but didn't convert on your site, you can re-target them with other offers of Hotels in Paris that have capacity on those dates. Just what your users want, and just what is most likely to get you a conversion!

Dynamic Ads come to Instagram

The popularity and rapid growth of Instagram, as well as it's young and trend-setting user base, make it perfect for marketing products like travel or clothing. Facebook has announced it will now be making dynamic ads available on Instagram, which should be a boon for brands targeting millennials.

So if you're an e-commerce store with a user base that is active on Instagram, or a travel brand wanting to patch up some of the leaks in your marketing funnel, Facebook dynamics ads are definitely an option you should consider.

Plus changes to Custom audiences

In this BIG announcement, Facebook also explained a BIG change to the targeting options for Custom Audiences from your website are:

• Frequency: how many times someone does a certain thing, such as visiting a page.
• Time spent: how much time someone spent doing a certain thing, such as exploring a website or viewing a specific page.
• Dynamic date: a range of dates that the person has shown interest in, such as for a flight or a hotel reservation.
• Aggregated values: the total amount that a person has spent.
• Devices: these include Android devices, iOS devices, desktop and other mobile devices.

Facebook explain the importance of this change like this:

These advanced behaviour criteria enable advertisers to move beyond creating audiences based solely on web page visits and events to being able to segment their audience by the intensity of their interest.