Imagine that you just finished creating a great-looking social media post and feel really accomplished. Only to realize that you have to do that again to show it in display advertising. So, you do that same task twice. And there is a last-minute request to change the order of images in the Facebook post. And another request to change the slogan on the post. If only there was something that could reduce the double work for all the changes.
What if we said that you can get the creative for "free". By importing from social media in Nexd Campaign Manager you just select an already existing social media post and get a tag as usual. That's more free time for you, on us.
In a nutshell, Social Display ads are automated social media posts recreated for traditional banner placements.
When to use this solution?
This is ideal for any brand that has an active social media presence. The social to display campaigns are really successful because:
You get a display creative with no extra effort. Repurposing what you already have will maximize existing creative investments. Social marketing doesn’t need to remain siloed from other ad formats. Frictionless importing allows you to focus your time and effort from rework to recalibrating your campaign to best meet your goals.
Less waiting time as there is no need to approve the creative, as it looks similar to the social post. This results in cohesive communication both in display and social advertising.
The ad shows social proof. The number of likes and comments improves user engagement with better performance than ordinary display ads. This is a standard in social, but a novelty in display ad space.
The layout is known for all social media users, but not widespread on the open web. This reduces ad fatigue or ad blindness and creates both familiarity and freshness to ad viewers.
You diversify your channels and reduce your dependency on social media platforms. You can run the ad on mobile, desktop and in-app.
We currently support only Facebook posts (single image and video, plus carousel format), but let us know if there are any other platforms that you are really waiting for. Is it Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, or something that we even have not heard of? 🧐 Regardless of that, you can just choose the Social to display layout and add any assets to this.
Why use our import solution?
First of all, as with all our self-serve solutions, there is:
No difficult design issues
No tedious custom development needed
No high one-time fees for setup
No long approval process for making changes
No limits on using third parties to track your results
Just your social media post running smoothly in display, at scale, on the open web, with any DSP or SSP.
In addition to the above, there are some real tangible benefits that should convince you to try our solution:
The creative will automatically update the reactions (number of likes and comments) on the ad. You can, of course, turn it off, if needed.
When you make changes to the post on Facebook, you can reimport the creative in Nexd Campaign manager. This results in much more real-time experience than stale banner ads and no more lengthy turnaround times to update creatives.
How to set it up?
1. Select your Post
On the campaign creative list page, Choose Import -> Import Social.
Log into Facebook, and give our app the right permissions. You have to do this only once.
Following, you have two options to choose from when importing an existing Facebook post from a page you manage:
Click on the "Choose post" button to import a post from a Facebook page
Enter a direct URL link to import a Facebook post (read tips on how to set it up)
Choose post option:
When you choose the first option, "Choose post", you will see the list of your latest posts with their thumbnail, post date, message, number of likes, comments, views, and shares. You can sort the table by clicking on each column header and preview the post by clicking on the row.
Then, select a post and click Import.
2. Optionally edit the assets or metadata
When the post is imported you can:
change the creative size. Please note that as the social media post resolutions and display media placements do not match, we automatically select the most popular size 300x250 and fit the assets in that size.
change all the assets: position, scale, add, replace and remove
rename the page name and replace the logo
add, change and remove hashtags
choose whether to sync the number of likes and comments or edit them manually
turn on or off the displaying of the page name, hashtags, number of likes and comments
change any creative settings
At all times there is a button "Reimport" that downloads the freshest assets and metadata from Facebook and replaces the current values.
A word of caution that this will discard all changes that you made for the current creative.
3. Publish or export (as usual)
Now, all you need is to select a platform (if needed) and publish or export the banner as usual.
Analyzing results
As always you will have a familiar overview of the campaign and a detailed view of each creative performance. In addition to that, you can complement it by using third-party trackers. The layout has some additional events that be seen in analytics or used by trackers. You can track when the ad viewer clicks on:
number of likes
number of comments
page icon or name
hashtags text
About permissions
We are connecting directly to Facebook, so there is no need to hassle with assets from your email or computer drive. However, you need to grant us the following rights to your Facebook pages:
Access your Page and App insights (read_insights) - This allows our app to read the number of likes, views, and shares for the posts that will help you select the needed post and update the information on the ad.
Read content posted on the Page (pages_read_engagement) - This allows our app to read content (posts, photos, videos) posted by your page to import them directly onto the ad.
Read user content on your Page (pages_read_user_content) - This allows our app to read the number of comments for the posts that will help you select the needed post and update the information on the ad.
Show a list of the Pages you manage (pages_show_list) - This allows our app to show you the selection of Pages.
You will be prompted of these permissions in the Import from Social card when you click on the Facebook icon or enter a link to the post. For security reasons, you have to revalidate the permission every hour.
Read more about permissions on Facebook.
Some common pitfalls
Although we have done our best to ensure a frictionless experience, there are still some issues that you should be aware of:
As Facebook has a lot of different post links, here's a list of the ones that we can recognize:
https://www.facebook.com/123/posts/456https://www.facebook.com/ABC/posts/456https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=456&id=123
where123is page ID,456is page ID andABCis page name
A good way to retrieve a Facebook Post link is to click on the date at the top of the Post as seen here:
This will open up a new page/tab with the desired URL.
Because Facebook uses a very aggressive optimization level, some of your creatives may not look so good. So there may be situations where you have to use the original assets that were used to make the social media post.
Unless you have direct access to your influencer account, you cannot use their posts as the basis of the creative. You have to have permission on Facebook to the page.