The social media giant is preparing to offer a frictionless shopping experience over the holidays.
As a strategy to eliminate some of the friction in online and mobile shopping through the holiday season, new Facebook ad features are being unveiled. These are commerce-driven advertisements and options available both on Facebook and on Instagram.
The new formats were developed specifically for mobile commerce optimization.
Mobile commerce has been a particular focus for the Facebook ad features as almost four out of every five online features (78 percent) come from mobile devices, particularly smartphones but also tablets.
According to the unveiling, there were three primary purposes for the new formats. These are: reaching more shoppers in the market, providing them with desirable discounts, and making it possible for them to “sharpen” their skills on a digital level.
The rollout will begin along with the holiday shopping season. This will involve “Ads With Product Tags On Instagram,” which will provide simplification for small businesses and advertisers in tagging their products to make it possible for consumers to discover them and shop for them. They will drive traffic directly to Instagram product detail pages.
The Facebook ad feature are based on the results of a year-long beta test by an advertiser group.
According to the social media giant, the advertisers have been beta testing these new options for about a year. Now they are being rolled out to all advertisers by way of the “Ad Manager” on Instagram.
“Shopping Engagement Custom Audiences” is also being rolled out, making it possible for advertisers to design their own custom audience profiles to focus on users who have already shown interest in their brand or product through specific actions such as :saving a product” by way of initiating or shopping even if a purchase was never completed.
Similarly, “Shopping Lookalike Audiences” on Instagram provides similar options to those Facebook ad features by reaching those that have shown purchase intent, matching them with others who have comparable profiles within their user base. The “Discount 
Feature for Facebook Shops” on the main Facebook platform will develop specific traffic among those users who are seeking discounts, deals, and other promotions based on price reductions.
