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Meta’s New Ad Best Practices: Focus on Reels for Best Results

Meta has recently shared insights on what’s driving the best results in advertising right now, and surprisingly, it’s not targeting, budgets, or bidding. The key is creating ads for one specific placement: Facebook and Instagram Reels.

Meta’s data supports this new focus: ads optimized for Reels typically see a 13% better return on ad spend (ROAS) on average and a 16% lower CPA. This 16% lower CPA, in particular, can be the difference between a campaign that is or isn’t scalable, potentially changing a business entirely.

3 Key Requirements for Reels-Focused Ads

To create ads built with Reels in mind—which can still be run on other placements—there are three main things you need to do:

1. Use a Vertical Aspect Ratio (9×16)

  • The New Rule: You must be making ads with a vertical aspect ratio (9×16). This aspect ratio is critical because it makes the ad look good on the whole screen on a mobile device and makes the Reel feel like it’s meant for the space. Many Reels currently come in at 4×5 and don’t fully fit.
  • The Shift in Advice: This is a significant change from the old advice, where if you could only create one ad format, you were told to use a 1×1 (square) aspect ratio as it would look decent everywhere.
  • Current Recommendation: If you only have the resources to create ad creative in one aspect ratio, do it for vertical (9×16). You are better off concentrating on this in the first instance, as it is now more important than Feed ads.

2. Add Audio

  • The Sound-On Shift: You need to make sure you add audio to your ad, assuming it’s not a video ad that already includes people speaking.
  • Old vs. New: The old wisdom was to build for “sound off” because people needed to read sound. Now, the data shows that people have their sound on more, especially in the Reels space, so you should build for “sound on.”
  • Utilizing Advantage+ Creative Enhancements: Meta makes adding audio easy. Music is often included by default as part of Advantage+ creative enhancements. The recommendation is to use this feature but to be the filter. You can click into the enhancements to review and say yes or no to specific suggestions, like the music. You can also manually adjust and pick a track you prefer. Using the music included in this setup ensures you never run into copyright issues.

3. Keep Important Elements within the Safe Zones

  • The Safe Zone: To ensure your ads are built with Reels in mind, make sure that everything important is included within the safe zones.
    • This is a relatively small area.
    • It doesn’t mean you can’t include things outside of it, but any text overlays, offer information, or key visuals that people must see need to be in the safe zone.
  • Why It Matters: If you build your Reels with the safe zone in mind, they will work on other placements. If you don’t, important content can be covered on Reels by the Instagram profile name, page information, or the CTA button, or look “rubbish” on different placements. Meta has a good support document on safe zones that you should consult.

New Ad Delivery and Optimization Best Practices

Meta has also shared new recommendations for campaign structure and optimization that revolve around the power of its AI.

1. Consolidation and Full-Funnel Optimization

  • The Advice: Meta is recommending that advertisers consolidate their campaigns and ad sets—stop having lots of different campaigns (unless they are advertising very different things) and have fewer ad sets.
  • How the Funnel Works Now: This consolidation leads advertisers to question how to put different ads (Top-of-Funnel vs. Bottom-of-Funnel) in front of different people.
  • Meta’s Solution: Meta’s AI is now able to decide in amongst the ads within one ad set (e.g., one sales campaign with six different ads) which one to show first.
    • It can show a more Top-of-Funnel ad first.
    • It can then show an engagement-based or view-based audience the more Bottom-of-Funnel ad to drive a conversion.
    • The ads are working in conjunction with each other, even within a single ad set.
  • Optimization Challenge: This mechanism can make optimization tricky. An ad might have a much worse ROAS, but Meta might be spending a lot on it because it’s using it as a Top-of-Funnel (TOFU) ad.

2. Updated Optimization Rule: Don’t Turn Ads Off Prematurely

  • The Latest Advice: Don’t turn an ad off unless Meta stops spending money on it.
  • The Trap: If you turn off the TOFU ad because its ROAS is poor, thinking Meta will spend all the money on the better-performing Bottom-of-Funnel ad, the overall performance of the other ad will drop. You’ve removed the necessary TOFU component, and the remaining ads may be too far down the funnel.
  • The New Process:
    1. Only turn off an ad if Meta isn’t spending on it, as this means the system has worked out there are better alternatives.
    2. Once an ad is turned off, introduce new ads to compete against your existing, spending ones.
    3. See if Meta spends money on the new ads and how much. If they stop spending, turn them off.

3. Creative Diversity is Essential

  • Feeding the AI: For Meta’s new optimization process to work as well as possible, advertisers need to feed it with creative diversity. The complex, AI-driven funnel optimization cannot happen if you only have one ad or a few very similar variations.
  • What Meta Wants:
    • Create ads in different formats.
    • Create ads that speak to different people within your audience.
    • Create ads that cover different parts of the sales funnel (some more awareness-based, some more sales-based).
  • The Data: Meta campaigns incorporating five to ten creative assets win more attention, resulting in a 44% increase in effectiveness and a 24% increase in ad spend compared to using a single creative.
  • Personalized Delivery: As Meta’s AI gets smarter, it can take advantage of this diversity. It can determine that one person is more likely to respond to a talking-head video, while another is more likely to respond to an animated video, and deliver the right ad to the right person at the right time in the funnel. This is most important for considered purchase products, less so for impulse buys.

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