Introducing Facebook playable ads

Facebook today has announced the launch of playable ads – an interactive ad format allowing users to engage in feed with the experience of an app or game, before clicking through to download it.

Working together with our sister company Undertone, Paragone is proud to have been recognised by Facebook as both a run and create partner for the new playable ad format.  Undertone’s domain expertise in building HTML5 creatives adds further strength to the Paragone playable ads offering.

Innovation in social advertising

Throughout the first half of 2018, Facebook has been testing this innovation with a handful of lucky advertisers. The small number of gaming and non-gaming clients have had the opportunity to discover the power of this new ad format for driving mobile app installs.

Facebook say that playable ads have proven to allow mobile app install advertisers to acquire higher value users, which in turn helps the advertiser see higher return in advertising spend.

Case in point: Audible

While most advertisers given access to test the ad format have so far been from the mobile gaming industry, there was a prominent exception. Our client Audible France was lucky enough to get to test the format, through the Paragone platform. An Amazon company, Audible is a seller and producer of spoken audio entertainment, information, and educational programming.

The initial playable ads campaign from Audible has shown that this exciting new format is not only reserved for gaming advertisers.

In collaboration with the Paragone Managed Service team, Audible’s goal for the ad was to promote a series of audio books, and drive downloads of the Audible app.

• With an invitation in the ad text to discover the audiobook by scratching on the image, the ad built intrigue of what might be waiting for the user behind the question mark.
• By rubbing away the orange background, the user discovered an image of the audiobook of the day, as well as a some details on the author and content.
• This is followed below by a strong CTA to download the app.

Audible’s trial of this format paves the way for advertisers from a wide variety of industries to start planning how they might put it to use. Read the full Audible France case study.

We always make sure we have our finger on the pulse of the latest innovations from Facebook, and playable ads is certainly an exciting one of those. Tests show users are responding well to the interactive nature of the format, and the fact that it all happens within the feed is really novel. We know more of our clients are excited to test this format out, and we’re excited to be part of putting together some more creative campaigns soon!
Pierre Lou Dominjon, CEO Paragone.