Facebook Rolls Out More ‘Playful’ Ad Formats

Facebook’s new ad offers

Facebook wants its ads to be more interactive and basically just more fun. It’s rolling out ad formats that use polls, games and augmented reality, and it says in a blog post that the goal is to “encourage a playful experience between people and businesses.” As an example of what Facebook is doing with AR, it showed an ad from makeup brand WeMakeUp that lets customers hold up their phones like a mirror and virtually “try on” different shades of lipstick. Customers spent an average of 38 seconds playing with the lipstick ad, which boosted sales, Facebook says.   

Facebook says digital ads are moving away from the old-school model of brands pushing information at passive users. Game-like ads are good for brands, but they’re also good for Facebook, which competes against platforms that arguably have more amusements built in, like TikTok and Snapchat. Speaking of Snapchat, it’s getting a new 3D camera mode. So now your bunny-face Snapchat selfies will look a little fancier.

More on Facebook 

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with President Donald Trump (who is more of a Twitter guy) at the White House. A Facebook spokesman called Thursday’s meeting “productive,” Bloomberg News reports, while Trump tweeted that it was “nice.” In other words, we basically know nothing. (Amid all the regulatory pressures on Facebook, Zuckerberg did have a tense exchange with Republican Senator Josh Hawley “over his company’s record on privacy and safeguarding user data,” Bloomberg writes.) …[read more]