Facebook has just come up with an update that all digital marketers want to know about. If you are using Facebook for advertising, you need to be aware of this update.

What’s happening with the Facebook mobile News Feed?

On their business blog, Facebook has announced they are changing the aspect ratios for visuals on Mobile News Feed. Starting from August 19, Facebook ads will undergo some changes “to match the look and feel of the new Facebook design introduced earlier this year“.

There are two major changes.

1. New aspect ratios for videos and photos

With this update, Facebook is switching to new aspect ratios for ad visuals. Maximum media height for videos and photos will reduce to 4:5 on Mobile News Feed. Now, the tallest aspect ratio for images without links and for videos is 4:5. Media taller than 4:5 will be masked in the Facebook News Feed on mobile.

2. Fewer lines of primary text will show on mobile News Feed. 

Another update is the amount of text that will show on mobile News Feed. Instead of 7 lines, the primary text is now truncated to only 3 lines, after which people will be prompted to click to view additional text.

According to Facebook, these changes are designed to simplify their formats and improve consistency of the mobile experience. In addition to that, the company believes this will help increase ad effectiveness.

What does it mean to marketers?

From the marketers’ perspective, this Facebook update brings in new opportunities as well as challenges. We talked to our User Acquisition team to find out what these changes mean to Facebook marketers. Here are the 3 major takeaways.

Fewer things to optimize

The new update is making the life of marketers easier, as there is going to be much less to optimize. Marketing managers will only have to create one ad set that will now work both on Facebook and Instagram. No need to readjust the visuals for every platform.

More need to be on point

Since the amount of primary text is cut down to 3 lines, marketers will have to make sure they stay on point with the ad. They will need to stay focused and not get into too many details with the ad description.

On the one hand, it makes the life of marketers more difficult. Now, they will have to get more creative to convey the idea in fewer lines of text.

On the other hand, it reduced the amount of white noise on Facebook. With less text allowed in the ads, advertisers will try to get to the point faster.

The need to resize old visuals (possibly)

Last but not least, with this update, marketing teams will have to rework their ad creatives. In order to avoid the visuals getting truncated in the mobile News Feed, make sure they align with the recommended aspect ratio (4:5).

How to adjust your ad creatives to the Facebook changes

To make sure your ad creatives show up beautifully in the mobile News Feed, you’ll want to tweak the aspect ratio of the video. It’s easy to do it in Wave.video.

Step 1. Select the necessary aspect ratios.

Navigate to the step “Select formats” and choose the options 4:5 Vertical and 2:3 Vertical.

Step 2. Adjust the video to the new format

Next, on the step “Edit” switch to the video format 4:5 and adjust your video accordingly. You might want to move the text message around or reposition the visual.

 

Then download the video and update your Facebook campaigns. That’s pretty much it!

Over to you

How is this Facebook update going to affect your business? Share in the comments below.