Start with a goal. Start by choosing an objective for your ads, then tailor their style and format around what you hope to achieve. For example, you can increase awareness of your brand by using media that tells a story about the people behind your products. Below, Tio Gazpacho's ad tells a story about why he started the business. Learn more about tailoring your creative to your objective.

Show people using your product. Facebook ads often run in someone's News Feed or Instagram feed, right next to posts from their family and friends. To create attention-grabbing ads that feel like a familiar part of someone's social fabric, show images of people benefiting from your product, instead of just the product itself.

Less (text) is more. Too much text is distracting and can lead to your ad being shown to fewer people. Images that are uncluttered by text have greater impact. Learn more about writing effective copy for your ads.

Focus your message. Crop tightly around the important part of the image. If you're trying to fit too much information into a single piece of media, consider using the carousel format to show off multiple images within a single ad.

If you're running multiple ad sets within a single campaign, make sure that all of your images have a consistent theme. Learn more about choosing the right visual messages for your ads.

Use high-resolution images You don't have to be a professional photographer to create great-looking ads. Just make sure that you pay attention to the size and quality of the media files that you're working with. Find size recommendations for your particular advertising objective in the Facebook ads guide.

Play around. Make sure that you play around with different images and formats before you commit to a particular ad, and always preview how your ad will look "in the wild" before you run it. You can do all of this over at Creative Hub. You can also create mockups, get feedback on your creative and find inspiration from other advertisers.

Make your brand stand out

Instagram is a place that people go to discover and become inspired by the images they see. As a business on Instagram, you should focus your Instagram advertising campaigns around three key objectives: on brand, concept driven and well crafted.

Make sure that your images are on brand

1. You should use high-quality images in your Instagram ads. Your ads should be creative while also showing your brand's point of view. For images that you use in your Instagram ads, find different ways of incorporating your brand's logo, icon or a colour scheme that's recognisable to the audience that you're trying to reach.
2. Consistency is part of creating an on-brand Instagram campaign. When people see your images in their Instagram feed or visit your Instagram Profile, they should know that it's your brand and understand the message that you're trying to get across. Bear in mind that the images you share on Instagram should be consistent even if you use some images as organic content and others as ads.

Use images that are concept driven

What do you want your message to be? What do you want people to think or feel when they see your ad? How do you want people to describe your brand? You should ask yourself all of these questions before sharing images on Instagram.

• Tell a story: Take a series of images that tell a story about your brand and share them over a period of time.
• Try a specific visual treatment: Use different filters to create a visual mood with your images. You could even use a series of different filters to show a change in mood overtime.
• Develop a theme: Create a series of unique images that all share a common theme. For instance, you could show a group of friends going to the beach and the activities that they did there, or you could show a single object in multiple settings.

Make sure that your images are well crafted

You don't have to be a photographer to create beautiful images on Instagram. Just bear the following in mind as you create images for Instagram:

• Strong focal point: Sometimes, keeping your images simple is the best way to make them stand out. Avoid making your images too complex or busy. Instead, focus on one or two places where you want to draw people's eyes. As a best practice, one focal point should include a brand logo or another brand element that's recognisable to your audience.
• Framing and balance: Straighten out images to make them look cleaner and consider symmetry and the rule of thirds as you're taking your images.
• Lighting and detail: Make sure that you use clear images that are high-resolution. Pixelated images and images with bad lighting or other flaws may not perform as well on Instagram.

Check to make sure that your ads follow our Advertising Policies

Facebook and Instagram ads should follow our Advertising Policies.

Create Instagram video ads that work

Create Instagram Stories that work

Create an Instagram image ad in Creative Hub

You don't need a big budget, or any professional training, to make creative ads which capture attention on Facebook. In fact, some large and small advertisers are finding success with simple, attention-grabbing creative.

If you think your image ads could be more effective...

Try these tips for creating ads with a single point of focus.

Small changes can increase your chances of grabbing people's attention.

If video is too expensive...

Carousel ads are also a great showcase for products.

Have you tried the slideshow ad format? It's easy to create a slideshow from carousel images or other photos.

If you don't have much equipment...

Mobile Studio shares inspiration from advertisers who have prototyped or created engaging ads on mobile phones. You'll find a wealth of recommended apps and easy ideas.

Creative Platform Partners are third-party businesses working with Facebook that can help you create or improve your video ads. This is a cost-effective option for cutting down longer videos effectively.

If you want to add movement...

Moving gifs, cinemagraphs and boomerangs can be eye-catching in News Feed.

These formats aren't only popular with small businesses: the Martini team had an 11-second average viewing time on their cinemagraph campaign and Kayak enjoyed a 39% lower cost per incremental searcher with video than still images.

If you have content that needs new life...

Create compelling short ads with images you already have, using text, licensed music overlays and these simple tools. You can also try the Ripl app and the Videoshop app.

Automated captions is a useful tool for adding captions to Facebook video ads, to engage people browsing News Feed with sound off. Or, take a look at the Legend app.

If you want to build better mobile video ads...

Creative Hub allows your team to mock up ad designs together, playing around with different formats and placements.

It also allows you, your team and your clients to preview ads as they will appear on mobile devices within News Feed, which helps to prevent display issues.

Try these tips for creating effective video ads.

Learn more:

• Creative inspiration for businesses
• Creative Hub: bring your ideas to life on mobile
• Create video ads with creative platform partners

Create a customised, high-quality ad experience without the expense or challenges of video production.

Slideshow ads let you combine multiple images and videos, text and sound to capture your audience's attention and tell a story.

Slideshow ads play automatically on Facebook and Instagram on smartphones, tablets and computers just like a video, and will loop.

Advantages of slideshow

• Create an immersive experience quickly - slideshow ads are easy to make and edit, with low production cost
• Build great ads from your Page or phone - choose from free stock images, rich video editing tools and a wide range of music
• Tell compelling stories- you can use images to build powerful narratives
• Simplify complex processes with images - show instead of tell how to create recipes or complete tasks
• Reach people with slower connections - slideshow ads use five times less data than videos. Some advertisers use a slideshow version of their video ads in markets where people have slower connections and older devices.

Creative tips

• Use high resolution still images or an existing video.
• For video uploads, choose .MOV or .MP4 file types.
• Start with 3-10 images, with a recommended image ratio of 16:9, 1:1 or 2:3. Each image should have a similar image ratio.
• Combine with any Facebook targeting such as bandwidth, device or demographic targeting.
• Select images from Shutterstock, your Pages library or your desktop or mobile.
• Upload your own music (if you own the rights). If not, several free tracks are available.
• Experiment with cropping images, re-ordering them, adding text, using fade and changing duration for effect.

Test your slideshow ad

To see if people favour your fast-loading slideshow ads over videos:

1. Create two ad sets in one campaign; one in the slideshow format, the other in video format.
2. Ensure that everything about the ad sets is as similar as possible. They should have identical budgets, bids, targeting and landing pages.
3. Run the campaign.
4. Compare the metrics relevant to you for each ad set. You'll get the same metrics on slideshow ads as video ads. Learn how to find reporting metrics by platform, device and placement

More useful resources

Four ways to create a slideshow ad from your photos

Get inspiration from our success stories

Watch a webinar on what's new for Facebook slideshows

Get our demo in the Help Centre

The carousel format lets you show two or more images and/or videos, headlines and links or calls to action in a single ad unit. It can be used by nearly any business to accomplish a variety of advertising objectives.

Ads in the Carousel format consistently drive great results for advertisers. For example, many campaigns that use it see lower cost per conversion or click. Learn how to get the most out of the carousel format with this best practices guide.

Note: New carousel features roll out regularly. Some features may only be available in Ads Manager or for certain ad objectives at this time.

In this article:

• Before you begin
• Ways to use the carousel format
• Creative tips
• Test the effectiveness of the carousel format

Before you begin

Before creating ads in the carousel format, ask yourself:

• What makes your business unique? Have confidence in what makes you different and use Carousel ads to highlight it.
• What's the best way to represent the objective you're trying to achieve? Do you want to sell one product or multiple products? Or do you want to educate customers about your brand and offerings more generally?

Ways to use the carousel format

You can use the carousel format to:

• Feature multiple products that link to different landing pages. Give customers more options and help raise your click-through rate.
• Highlight multiple features of a single product. Show different product angles or details to better inform customers.
• Tell a story. Use images and/or videos in succession to illustrate a compelling narrative.
• Explain a process. Walk people through how your business works, step by step.
• Create a larger canvas. Present one large image using all of your frames for an immersive ad experience. Learn more.
• Sell the benefits. If you don't sell physical goods, use images and/or videos that show the benefits or results of becoming a customer.

Creative tips

• Use all of the available components of the Carousel format to tell your story. The images and/or videos are what grab people's attention, but don't ignore snappy headlines, descriptions and Calls to Action that give context, detail and encouragement.
• Use images and/or videos that are cohesive and engaging. Take images and/or videos from the same shoot or that feel similar to each other (e.g. same colour schemes).
• Make sure that your text meets guidelines. To ensure approval, check your text with this tool.
• Consider your audience. Use product imagery when targeting people who have visited product pages on your website. Reach prospective customers with lifestyle imagery.
• In most cases, show the best-performing carousel cards first. One of the benefits of the Carousel format is that you can test multiple pieces of creative at once and order them based on performance. You can then replace or remove low-performing carousel cards.

  However, if you're using the format to tell a sequential story or as a canvas for one long image, make sure that you opt out of the automatic optimisation feature when you create the ad.
• Decide how to best associate each carousel card with a landing page. If you're a large business with a large inventory, you may want to take people who click on a carousel card with a specific product on it to the page where they can buy that exact product.

  If you're a smaller business with a smaller inventory, you may want to take people who click on a carousel card to the page with all of your products in that category (e.g. If a carousel card features a women's top, it could send people to a page that showcases all of the women's tops that you sell).
• Get inspired.See creative ways in which other advertisers have used the Carousel format to get ideas for your own campaign.

Test the effectiveness of the carousel format

To get a good idea of how the carousel format can help boost the performance of a campaign, you can run a test:

1. Create two ad sets in one campaign. One should have three to five ads with different images and/or videos in the single image or video format. The other should have an ad in the Carousel format containing those same three to five images and/or videos.
2. Ensure that everything about the ad sets is as similar as possible. They should have identical budgets, bids, targeting and landing pages.
3. Run the campaign.
4. Create an insights report and compare the metrics relevant to you for each ad set.

Facebook and TV work better together than TV alone in delivering brand results.

In an ideal world, there would be time to create original videos for TV and mobile; but of course, that isn't always possible.

Following these five tips, you can tweak your TV ad to make it easier to consume on mobile. This is just a guide; nothing substitutes experimentation with a brand lift study to learn which videos resonate best with your audience.

Brand and message

• Add your logo so that, even on the thumbnail, browsers understand who you are
• If possible, introduce your brand to the story up front

Typography and captions

• Add subtitles, as not everyone on mobile browses with sound on
• Instead of a voiceover, consider integrating your messaging into the content with dynamic text and graphics

Crops and ratios

• Build vertical videos to avoid display issues (see some creative vertical video ideas here)
• Experiment with aspect ratios across placements (full requirements here) as well as split screens or grids

Duration

• Trim it; the majority of your videos for people on the go in News Feed should be 15 seconds or less
• If you can, condense the story

Story arcs

• Can you reframe the story to bring out the key message sooner?
• Experiment with approaches beyond a traditional story arc by playing with speed, rhythm and order

Read more:

• Optimising video content for mobile
• Creative Hub: Bring your ideas to life on mobile
• Super Bock success story

Looking at how Facebook content is consumed on different devices, we have seen that people spend on average 1.7 seconds with any given piece of content on mobile, compared to 2.5 seconds on desktop. These speeds are even faster for younger audiences. But regardless of the difference in time spent, we have seen that people can recall mobile News Feed content at a statistically significant rate after only 0.25 seconds of looking at the post. Learn more

Here are our six tips for attention-grabbing mobile videos:

Make short videos - mobile video works best when it's 15 seconds or less.

Capture attention quickly by starting with the most compelling parts of your video.

Use vertical or square video so your mobile video ads take up more of the screen. Most people hold their mobile device vertically. Instagram Stories is an easy-to-use, free vertical video tool.

Feature your product or brand message early.

When using video that wasn't created for mobile, edit your videos so that your product or brand message feature early in the first 15 seconds.

Use captions so that people can better understand your video if they choose to have the sound off.

See more inspirational video ad examples on Creative Hub.

Learn about the value of Facebook video ads

Video ads allow you to show off your product, service or brand using a video. You can create video ads in Ads Manager or boost a post from a Facebook Page that includes a video. Video ads appear on Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network and Messenger.

You can use video ads to:

• Show off your product, service or brand in different places on or off Facebook. You can deliver video ads to places such as Facebook feed, Instagram Stories or Messenger Inbox. Video ads support multiple aspect ratios depending on the placement. You can also show off different pieces of creative when you use the asset customisation feature in Ads Manager.
• Capture attention quickly. Create videos that are 15 seconds or less to captivate your audience and tell a brand or business story.
• Deliver a single message. Convey a clear, simple message that makes people take action after viewing your ad, such as buying a specific product or visiting a website.

For example, you can drive people to your website to learn more about an upcoming product that you are launching. You can show off the product in motion in the ad or include testimonials from people using the product.

Learn more

• Create a video ad
• Available objectives for video and slideshow ads
• Supported video formats for ads
• Tips for better mobile video

We all spend, on average, three hours a day on our phones.(1)

Brand advertisers who embrace what's different and uniquely valuable about building brand awareness on mobile devices are succeeding on Facebook and Instagram. By learning through rapid experimentation, they are seeing incredible results.

Here are three principles for creating ads that capitalise on the mobile opportunity:

• Get personal faster. When you target an ad to someone on their mobile, you're reaching into the palm of their hand. You're literally getting close to them – often inches from their face – in a world of seemingly infinite content they control. Three out of four smartphone users made the effort to customise which apps appear on their home screen, meaning no two phones look the same. People enter and exit apps without a second thought, looking at a piece of content for seconds before moving on, but also easily returning to content that caught their eye during an earlier session.

  Mobile audiences expect ads that are not only targeted at them, but also ads that are tailored to their interests and habits. People tend to engage with brands that they believe understand who they are.

  Facebook and Instagram offer advertisers huge potential for reach and engagement. Facebook and Instagram are embedded in our lives; they are where many of us connect with the people and issues we care about.

  Have you discovered FBIQ, our tool that provides aggregate information about geography, demographics and more for people on Facebook? This can help you target ads more effectively. Audience Network videos are also a brand-friendly way to engage focused audiences beyond Facebook and Instagram.

• Get to the point. We've seen huge growth in mobile. Over 100 million hours of video are watched every day on Facebook.(3) It's predicted that 75% of all mobile data traffic will be video by 2020, compared to over half now.(4)

  Creative gifs, cinemagraphs, slideshows and videos on Facebook and Instagram News Feed are a great way of capturing fleeting attention. Get six mobile video tips here

• Embrace change. Advertisers need to build for today's habits, but be prepared for mobile behaviour to change fast.

  For example, although video on mobile is primarily consumed quickly, we're seeing growing evidence of mobile users also watching longer videos in planned, "lean back" sessions. In fact, in one study, 30% of mobile viewing was of video over 20 minutes in length.(7)

  To stay agile, we recommend that you test using both Facebook and third-party tools to help understand your audience at every time of day.

  Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings is a third-party measurement tool. Our newer video solutions such as Live, 360 and in-stream are designed to capture attention. And Creative Hub is a mockup tool designed to help you build better ads for mobile.

1 eMarketer April 2016

2 Nielsen Mobile Netview, March 2016

3 Facebook internal data

4 Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update 2016-2021 white paper, March 2017

5 Ooyala Global Video Index, Q3 2016