A Closer Look At Facebook’s New Lead Ads
By Patrick Smyth, PS&M's Digital Director
Recent studies have found that consumers spend over 6 hours per day on their myriad of digital devices, and 3 hours of that time is specifically on mobile platforms. Generating online leads has been getting increasingly more difficult for advertisers due the marketplaces shift towards mobile experiences. On average, mobile lead forms take 38.5% longer to complete than desktop forms. This is likely due to web browser auto-completion tools and the user’s access to full keyboards that are typical for desktop devices. Catering to mobile users is becoming increasingly more important for social networks like Facebook, where 84% of advertisements appear on mobile devices. Facebook’s recent updates to their Lead Ad hope to streamline the mobile form, and increase the amount of leads advertisers can collect on their platform. One such improvement is that now up to 21 separate data fields, like name and email, will be auto-populated with the information user’s have already shared publicly. This saves users time, and ultimately leads to an increase in form completions. In addition to the 21 fields of pre-populated information, advertisers can also prompt users to fill out up to 3 custom fields, which allows advertisers to learn more than ever before about their customers. Facebook has however warned that the number of fields on the forms be kept to a minimum, as completion rates drop off substantially the more fields that are required. Advertising innovations like these are great news for businesses and consumers alike. Consumers benefit by receiving the information they want with less hassle, and businesses can more effectively prospect for new customers.
