Facebook Announces Plans to Shrink Mobile News Feed Ad Space

Facebook is making changes to its mobile News Feed that may require advertisers to take a look at existing ad campaigns. 

Starting August 19th, Facebook will be rolling out an updated design that was first announced earlier this year. 

This change is designed to make Facebook’s mobile experience more simple, make it easier for users to digest each post, and improve the consistency of the mobile experience between Facebook and its mobile-first app Instagram. 

While these changes may present benefits to advertisers, the first step is to evaluate current campaigns so they’re optimized for the upcoming News Feed format. 

Facebook’s new mobile News Feed 

Facebook’s updated mobile News Feed features an all-new aspect ratio for both standard posts and advertisements. 

Currently, the mobile News Feed aspect ratio is 2:3 — but after August 19th it will change to a max of 4:5. This means that image heights will have to be shorter to be within guidelines. 

Here’s a photo showing how the new look will appear in comparison to the current aspect ratio: 

Clearly, this will require advertisers to upload shorter images for advertising purposes. 

While this may require some adjusting to current campaigns, it’s also important to note that advertisers running campaigns on both Facebook and Instagram would have needed to create a shorter photo anyway in order to fit within Instagram’s limits — so it’s recommended that you check out existing assets in your campaign manager before turning to a photo editor. 

Still, it’s important advertisers evaluate this before August 19th, as Facebook will mask any media taller than 4:5 on mobile News Feeds after the new design launches. 

As such, if you fail to address this beforehand and are on a per-day Facebook Ads budget, you could risk losing a lot of qualified mobile ad impressions. 

In addition to shortened image sizes, the amount of text displayed on posts and ads will shorten as well. 

As seen in the same photo featured above, ad copy will be shortened to only show three lines of primary text, compared to the seven lines of text that’s currently allowed. 

If ad copy exceeds three lines of primary text, users will be prompted to click “see more” to view full ad copy. 

Again, this is something all advertisers running campaigns that extend through August 19th should evaluate. Since ad copy can be a huge converting factor, you don’t want your audience to miss any compelling information due to it being hidden by the new limits. 

Advertisers should take time to re-work any headlines that may exceed this limit, and also keep it in mind for future campaigns. 

Why is Facebook making this update? 

These updates are an effort for Facebook to simplify its News Feed format on mobile and make each post a bit easier to take in with each swipe. 

In general, no matter how long or short a post is, people tend to spend the same amount of time looking at each post within their feed. For that reason, marketers should strive to convey the main takeaways for the ad in just a simple glance. Any more than that, you risk losing your most powerful messages to short attention spans. 

Facebook also stated that these changes are designed to “help drive increased ad effectiveness and make it easier to use the same assets on Facebook News Feed and Instagram feed.” 

In other words, this change essentially forces advertisers to convey their messaging in a more compressed and simple format, which offers the benefit of saving time in the ad creation process. 

With the dimensions and requirements for each platform more aligned, you don’t need to create multiple assets for the same campaign. Instead, you can use one set of assets to fit both needs, streamlining the ad creation and launch process. 

So, at the end of the day, these changes will likely bring benefits for your marketing team and your overall ad ROI, but only if you take the time to check out existing campaigns and evaluate before August 19th!