Facebook being a social media giant with over 1.8 billion active users each month is an ideal place to reach new audiences as people are spending a significant amount of time there. Facebook’s business platform has grown to give advertisers a variety of tools and options to reach these new audiences. With so many different options it can be difficult for businesses to figure out which Facebook ad is best to use.
This post will give a description of each Facebook advertisement and examples of their use to help you align and choose the ad that best fits your campaign’s objective.
1. Post Engagement
With Facebook post engagement ads, you can drive more engagement on individual posts and expand its original reach. This helps you generate more activity on your posts and helps you get more organic followers quickly by offering them the kinds of posts they’ll see more of if they follow you.
In the example above, the Fashion Stork Club ad promotes an update this company made to their Facebook photos. Notice that the add displays the post engagement (likes, comments, shares) along with the post to encourage viewers to engage with it.
2. Instant Experience
While app engagement ads are intended to highlight specific features to drive in-app engagements, app install ads are focused on generating new users. Instead of calling out specific features, app install ads are more likely to showcase the app’s core purpose and main functionality.
3. Video
The video ad features help educate your audience about your product features using video. In the example below, Spotify’s ad uses a creative, colourful video that focuses on finding new music and playlists for users to enjoy.
4. Event Responses
If you would like to bring awareness to your business’s location you may want to use the local awareness ad type to drive brand awareness in specific geographic regions. This ad type is largely the same as brand awareness ads, but will be more oriented and targeted via location. 
For example, Cold Stone Creamery used a local awareness ad to target people in a geographic area when their store in Bangladesh opened.
5. Offers
The offer claim objective allows you to customize your ads with calls-to-action specific to the offer. For example, you might use a “Learn More” call-to-action if you’re offering something that’s good only for the first 500 sign-ups, like in the ad example below:
The offer claim Facebook Ad type should lead your users directly to a sign-up page on your website where they can claim the offer you promoted.
6. Lead Generation Ads
In a traditional lead generation conversion path, users are driven to a landing page where they fill out a form. For example, you might use a Facebook offer claim ad (like we discussed in the previous section) to drive users to your website and have them fill out a form there.
Here’s an example that shows the conversion path the user goes through on a Facebook lead ad.
First, the user see a traditional conversion-focused ad:
Once the user clicks on the add and/or call-to-action (in this case, Sign-Up), they see this pop up within the Facebook app:
Next, the user can click the register button and see a form (of your choosing) with their information auto-filled.
Once the user submits the form on the lead ad, they can click out of the ad and go back to browsing on Facebook. It’s a great user experience and Facebook will sync with your CRM so your leads are right where you want them.
7. Page Likes
In some cases, you may want to use Facebook Ads to expand your organic reach. When this is your campaign goal, you should use the page like ad type to encourage new users to “like” your page. Once they do, they’ll be able to see your organic content when you post it.
Page like campaigns are best for businesses that put lots of effort into their social media presence and produce content specifically for their Facebook users to drive engagement.
8. Slideshow
Slideshow ads are close to the video category of ads but not quite a video. Think of them as billboards: they move quickly and can give an immersive ad experience. Slideshows are an affordable alternative to video, and also provide a quick loading time, so you can capture the attention span of someone who doesn’t want to wait for videos. These are a possible option for you if you want to quickly make ads. Facebook gives you the option of choosing from stock images and free video editing tools to make your ad spectacular. You can even choose music.
9. Carousel
Carousel ads are very diverse and Facebook hosts them on their website, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network. Carousels lets you show up to 10 images or videos in one ad. This expansive ad space embraces creativity. Common ways to use carousel ads are product demos, product highlights, showcasing specs about a product, and a way to tell stories.
10. Collection
Collection ads are pretty much like an online store, with a primary image of the product along with four images customers can tap through. If they decide to purchase, they can do so without leaving the platform.
11. Image
With a single, stunning image and little text, you can create a stunning image ad, where that picture will be the focal point. Images on Facebook gives you a format to use, with spaces to make sure your photo is incredible and you have the option to include copy.
How to Choose Which Facebook Ad Type to Use
1) Define your campaign goal.
Before you begin any ad campaign, you first need to determine what the goal of your campaign is.
2) Choose relevant types you could use.
Once you’ve defined the goal of your ad campaign, take a look at the different Facebook Ad types available to you. Luckily, you already know what each of the ad types are.
Choose the type most relevant to your goals.
3) Narrow down your options.
Once you’ve chosen which ad types are most applicable to your needs, choose the one you think will work best for you campaign. Or, use the same creative, copy, and targeting options to set up a campaign test using different ad types and see if one performs better than the other.
4) Write copy and create assets.
One great feature of Facebook’s Ads Manager tool is the wide range of creative and layout options you have available to you. Not only can you choose between image, video, photo grid, and carousel layouts, you can also customize your ads for mobile and desktop audiences.
As you run different ad campaigns, make sure to test and analyze what works best for your audience.
5) Use different ad types for different campaign goals.
Don’t just stick to one ad type for all of your campaigns. Instead, make sure you’re optimizing your ads for the right campaign objectives. Try out different Facebook Ad types and different ad campaigns to optimize your ad strategy for your audience.
6) Target the right audience.
7) Test, analyze, and repeat.
Once you’ve defined your campaign objective, selected your ad type, created your ad, and targeted the right audience, it’s time to analyze your results.
Read the full article at: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/the-facebook-ad-types
