In this tutorial, Hernan Vazquez from ScaleDriven explains the various Facebook and Instagram ad placements and how to choose the most effective ones. He introduces the concept of placement liquidity, emphasizing that allowing Facebook’s algorithm (via Advantage+ automatic placements) to select placements yields better performance because Facebook has extensive audience data and limited feed inventory. He then ranks placements by effectiveness: (1) Advantage+ automatic placements, (2) Feed ads on Facebook and Instagram (mobile‑first), (3) Search‑result placements for higher intent, (4) Reels and Stories vertical short‑form video ads (16:9 vertical, 20‑30 s), (5) Right‑column ads for older demographics and retargeting, (6) In‑stream video feed ads (pre‑roll) with mixed results, (7) Audience Network (low performance, mainly for retargeting), and (8) Messenger ads for direct conversation conversions. Throughout, he stresses the importance of strong creative, pixel data, and retargeting, and advises advertisers to prioritize automatic placements, feeds, search, and short‑form vertical video, while using other placements sparingly.
Chapters
Today we're gonna talk about placements. Where does Facebook ad appear and how you can make sure that you're serving the right ad to the right audience. Hey everybody, Hernan Vazquez here and today I wanna share with you some of the stuff that we do at scaledriven.com to get better placements, to try and get our ads shown to the right type of people at the right time. So I get this question a lot, where does Facebook ads appear? And today I wanna share with you exactly that. Where do they appear and how to pick the exact placement that you wanna pick so that you're showing the right ads to the right type of people at the right time. Now if this is something that you're interested in, if you like these marketing tips, if you wanna learn more about this, feel free to share, subscribe, comment, rate, and feel free to share this with somebody that needs to see this so that you help us get the word out there and it really helps us grow. So let's talk about Facebook ads placements. There's something that's called placement liquidity in Facebook, which basically means that Facebook has a set amount of places where your ads are going to be shown. When you're scrolling on your phone, when you're scrolling on Facebook, when you're scrolling on Instagram, when you're scrolling over the web sometimes, you will see ads from Facebook. You have Messenger ads, you have feed ads, you have video ads, and these are all placements that Facebook put towards the disposal of advertisers so that we can actually pick and choose them. When I talk about audience liquidity, this is the first thing that you wanna have in mind when running your Facebook ads. Facebook is really different from some other networks like Google, TikTok, Twitter, and the reality is that the more power, quote unquote, that you give to the Facebook algorithm and to the Facebook platform to pick and choose your placements, the better. And this is called placement liquidity. And the reason that happens is because number one, Facebook has a lot more data about your ideal audience and your ideal customer and their behavior than you and I do. Number one, but also number two is because the Facebook feed is completely sold out. That means that there are literally no more users coming in. There's no more space there. So that's why we have been seeing an increase to advertise on Facebook and an increasing cost to advertise on Facebook over the past several years. So the more you let Facebook optimize and the more you focus on creating really good ads, number one, but also feeding the right type of data back to the Facebook pixel, the better your campaigns will perform. In some other networks like Google, you can be all granular when it comes to targeting, but that could kind of be detrimental. On Facebook unless you have a lot of pixel data and you know exactly what you're doing. So when you see on your Facebook Ads dashboard there's something called automatic placements— so lately they've changed their name to Advantage+ placements— just pick those because Facebook will actually show your ads in the best way possible, especially when you're starting out. Now as you start progressing in your Facebook advertising career, if you would, or as you start getting more data, the second best placements that you could ever put your ads on is is the actual Facebook feeds. Again, if you're scrolling on your phone or if you're on Instagram and on your desktop computer, you will see ads on the Facebook feed and the Instagram feeds. These are the best performing type of ads for many of us, especially because 80% of the traffic that you get from Facebook and Instagram will come from mobile devices. And the feeds are really attractive. The feed ads are really attractive, provided that you know what you're doing, you know, to your potential audience. So the feed ads are those that are being shown on the Facebook feed when you're scrolling on your phone or your computer and also Instagram feeds. The other kind of mini placement, if you would, which is being kind of phased out because a lot of people, they still browse Facebook on their desktop, and these are usually older people, are the Facebook right column ads. They tend to work really, really well if you have an offer specific for this type of demographic, senior citizens and maybe even a little bit more older people. They tend to work really, really well, and they also work really well for retargeting. Now the other option for placements is search. Facebook also has his own or its own built-in search engine, and this is especially true on Instagram, and this is especially true on Facebook. When you're typing in keywords, you can actually show up on these search results, and these are people that have a higher intent. Now let me tell you, their search engine doesn't even compare to Google search engine, right? And when you're advertising on Google or on YouTube, you're advertising on a search engine. But Facebook has, I would say, a pretty decent Facebook search engine. So when you when you select the Facebook search results placement, then that means that you're going to be showing your ads to people that are interested in what you have to offer. Now, the only downside to that, which I, you know, wish that Facebook had, is that you cannot actually choose the keywords. It's all about behavior. So you cannot actually choose the keywords that people type in to actually show up, which is a big downside compared to other advertising platforms. Now let's talk about kind of something that is really, really hot right now, which are Facebook Reels and Facebook Stories, and also Instagram Reels and Instagram Stories. The short-form content is taking over. And if you really want to take this to the next level, if you really want to get more customers and clients, I strongly suggest that you come up with Facebook Reels, Facebook Stories, Instagram Reels, and Instagram Story ads. Now, the best way to leverage this opportunity is to actually create content video ads that are specific for those placements. This is vertical content. You know, usually the aspect ratio is 16:9, so 16:12 by 9 width and whatnot. So you want to use that and you want to keep your ads pretty short. You want to keep them up to 20 to 30 seconds. Because again, short-form content is taking the world by storm and it's really, really valuable. If you want to really leverage these placements, you want to create content that's specific and ads that are specific for these placements. But they also work extremely well for retargeting and you can even run quote unquote traditional ads. They tend to work really well, especially when you have a lot of data in your pixel. But trust me, just create vertical videos for those placements. Now the next placements are Facebook video feeds. If you're running video ads, Facebook can also interrupt the video feeds and actually show So for instance, this is like pre-roll ads or in-stream ads on YouTube, so it's kinda similar, right? You have your ads running or you have your Facebook videos running and whatnot, and then Facebook can show your ads before or after the video themselves. These placements can or might not work. We have mixed results with them, so we just don't use it that much. And number 5, I would say the worst performing placement, if you would, it's the Audience Network. The Audience Network are basically Facebook attempts to create something similar to the Google Display Network. Google Display Network works extremely well, but the Audience Network are partner websites, right? These are websites that have Facebook ads on them and they don't really work as well. I wish that Facebook would pay more attention to that because this will free up a lot of inventory, but they only work well for retargeting and honestly we don't get a lot of results with them so we don't use them as much unless we're using automatic placements and retargeting options. So there you have it, basically the top to bottom way of running Facebook ads and where your ads are showing. There's some other campaigns, there's some other type of placements like Messenger ads, like you can show your little ad on Messenger. Specifically, this works well when you're trying to talk to somebody and try to convince them to take action on Messenger. We have a couple clients at scale-driven.com that that's what they do. They sell on Messenger and then they take them to a phone call to close them, and they work really well. But for the most part, you wanna use automatic placements, number one. Number 2, you wanna use the feeds. And number 3, you wanna use the search results as much as possible. And Reels and Story, do not forget Reels and Stories because they work extremely, extremely well, especially right now that short-form content is so hot. So I hope that this is helpful. If you wanna learn more tips and tricks about marketing and advertising, feel free to reach out, feel free to drop a comment somewhere around here, and feel free to share, like, subscribe, rate, because it really helps to get the word out there so that more people can see this type of content. Thank you so much for watching. I'll talk to you guys soon. Bye-bye.
