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Facebook Ad Placements: How To Choose The Best One

Lauren Breen
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Imagine you’re choosing the ideal location for a fitness brand billboard in your town. You’d consider factors like traffic, visibility, and the demographics of people likely to see it. Naturally, you’d want to place the billboard in a high-traffic area, like the route to a popular gym, to maximize its impact.

The same logic applies when selecting placements for your Facebook ads. As you build your campaign in Ads Manager, you’ll choose your ad settings, including where your ads appear across Facebook’s platforms.

The best ad placements align with where your potential customers spend their time. However, it’s important to note that placements are closely tied to your campaign’s objective. The placements available to you depend on the campaign objective you select. Additionally, your ad’s performance is heavily influenced by placement, so always optimize your creative for mobile users—96% of Facebook users access the platform on mobile devices.

Now, let’s dive into setting your ad placements in Ads Manager and explore the available placement options.

TL;DR

Facebook ad placements determine where your ads appear across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network.

  • Automatic Placements: Facebook optimizes delivery for the best results—great for beginners.
  • Manual Placements: Offers control to target specific platforms (best for advanced strategies).

Key Placement Options: Feeds, Stories, Video, Search, Instagram Reels/Explore, Audience Network, and Messenger.

Best Practices:

  1. Use automatic placements to gather data.
  2. Analyze performance in Ads Manager.
  3. A/B test placements to find what works.
  4. Optimize for mobile users.

Mix placements to maximize reach and results! 🚀

Understanding Facebook Ad Placements

Facebook ad placements refer to the various locations where your ads can be displayed across the Facebook platform, including Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, and Messenger. Understanding ad placements is crucial to ensure that your ads are shown to the right audience, at the right time, and in the right context. When setting up your campaign in Ads Manager, you’ll make decisions about ad placements at the ad set level. The options available to you will depend on the campaign objective you select. By strategically choosing ad placements, you can maximize the effectiveness of your facebook ad campaigns and reach your desired audience more efficiently.

Select Your Ad Placements in Facebook Ads Manager

In Ads Manager, you select ad placements at the ad set level, deciding where your ads will appear across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network. Understanding the various Facebook ad placement options is crucial for maximizing the effectiveness of your ads. You can also choose how ads are displayed across these surfaces:

  • Feeds: Ads in Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger feeds.
  • Stories and Reels: Full-screen vertical placements.
  • In-Stream: Mid-roll ads within videos.
  • Search: Ads shown in Facebook search results.
  • Messages: Ads within Messenger conversations.
  • In-Article: Ads inside Instant Articles.
  • Apps and Sites: Ads on third-party apps and websites through the Audience Network.

Automatic vs. Manual Placements

  1. Automatic Placements: Facebook optimizes placement based on your campaign objective to maximize performance and budget efficiency. When deciding between automatic and manual placements, it's important to understand the different Facebook ad placement options available to you.
  2. Manual Placements: Gives you full control to choose specific platforms and surfaces where your ads appear, ideal for targeted strategies.
Choose between automatic and manual placements at the ad set level
Choose between automatic and manual placements at the ad set level

Your choice of placement will depend on your campaign goals and how much control you want over the delivery of your ads.

When to Choose Automatic Placements

Automatic placements let Facebook’s algorithm allocate your budget to the best-performing placements across platforms. Automatic placements utilize Facebook's algorithm to optimize your ad settings for the best performance. The algorithm aims to deliver the lowest CPC while optimizing audience targeting, spending more of your budget on high-performing placements.

We recommend starting with automatic placements, especially if you’re new to Facebook ads. This approach helps you gather valuable data on ad performance by platform, device, and placement. Use the Breakdown filter in Ads Manager to analyze this data for insights into what works best.

When to Choose Manual Placements

Manual placements give you control over where your ads appear on Facebook’s platforms. Manual placements allow you to customize your ad settings to better control where your ads appear. Once you’ve run campaigns with automatic placements and analyzed performance data, manual placements can help you refine your strategy.

For best results:

  • Use a mix of placements to maximize reach and engagement.
  • Preview your ads to ensure they look good on each placement.
  • Optimize ads for both mobile and desktop if you choose “All Devices,” or focus on mobile—AdEspresso found mobile ads outperform desktop by over 45% for lead generation.

Facebook’s wide range of placement options lets you tailor ads to your audience and campaign goals.

Types of Facebook Ad Placements

Facebook offers a wide range of ad placement options, each designed to reach users in different contexts and on different platforms. Here’s a breakdown of the primary ad placement options:

  • Facebook News Feed: Ads appear in users’ desktop and mobile news feeds, blending seamlessly with organic content.
  • Instagram Feed: Ads appear in users’ Instagram feeds, offering a visually engaging way to reach your audience.
  • Audience Network: Ads are displayed on third-party apps and websites that are part of the Facebook Audience Network, extending your reach beyond Facebook’s own platforms.
  • Messenger: Ads appear in the Facebook Messenger app, either within the inbox or as sponsored messages.
  • Instant Articles: Ads are embedded within Instant Articles in the Facebook mobile app, providing a fast-loading, immersive experience.
  • In-Stream Videos: Ads run before, during, or after video content on Facebook and Audience Network, similar to traditional TV commercials.
  • Facebook Marketplace: Ads appear on the Facebook Marketplace home page or alongside product listings, ideal for ecommerce businesses.
  • Facebook Stories: Ads appear in Facebook Stories, offering a full-screen, immersive experience.
  • Instagram Stories: Ads appear in Instagram Stories, capturing users’ attention as they swipe through their story feed.
  • Facebook Search Results: Ads appear in search results when users search for keywords related to your ad, currently available on the Facebook mobile app.

By understanding the different ad placement options, you can choose the ones that best align with your campaign goals and target audience.

Facebook placements

Facebook News Feed

The Facebook news feed placement is a common choice for Facebook ads to be shown because it is the first surface a person sees when they log into their account. Among the various Facebook ad placement options, the News Feed is one of the most popular due to its high visibility. Desktop news feed ads tend to have a higher click-through rates (CTR), and cost-per-click (CPC) rates compared to other Facebook ad types. Mobile news feed ads tend to have a high CTR, but CPCs tend to be lower than desktop news feed ads.

Because of the high saturation of ads on Facebook news feeds, they are a highly competitive ad type. However, they are a good option if you are starting at the top of your sales funnel as they are heavily trafficked.

Facebook Right Column

Right column ads appear in the right-hand column of your desktop news feed. The Right Column is one of the many Facebook ad placement options available to advertisers. Facebook’s platform design is in an ongoing process, and so the current window of opportunity for people to view these ads are limited (to view these ads right now, you must be logged on Facebook, on desktop, and on your news feed).

News feed ads yield higher cost per mille, or cost per thousand views (CPMs) than right column ads because they are two times larger as they appear on the screen.

Facebook right column ad placement—Source

But, remember what we said earlier about choosing various placements? When used alongside news feed ads, right column ads can get up to three times more engagement since they reinforce your brand to audiences. These ad types can be most useful when trying to boost brand awareness to new audiences, or when retargeting old audiences.

Facebook Instant Articles

Facebook Instant Articles are a native format meant for media publishers to publish full-screen, immersive articles on Facebook. Instant Articles are one of the many Facebook ad placement options that offer a unique, immersive experience for users. Publishers have the option of monetizing their Instant Articles by using direct-sold ads or using Facebook’s Audience Network to insert ads. Your ads would be embedded within Facebook Instant Articles via Facebook’s Audience Network.

Ads displayed in Facebook Instant Articles—Source
Ads displayed in Facebook Instant Articles—Source

If you’re looking to embed your ads on mobile sites that host journalistic articles to begin with, you should choose Instant Articles as an ad placement since Facebook users open 52% more articles when they’re published as Instant Articles regular web links.

However, be sure that your ads are optimized for mobile since Instant Articles are a mobile-only ad format.

Facebook Marketplace

Facebook Marketplace ads appear on the Marketplace homepage or alongside product listings. Marketplace ads are one of the many Facebook ad placement options that are ideal for ecommerce businesses.

These ad placements are ideal for ecommerce companies that are selling products that fall within Facebook’s Marketplace categories.

Ads embedded within Facebook Marketplace—Source
Ads embedded within Facebook Marketplace—Source

While this ad placement may yield fewer impressions than other selling platforms like eBay or Amazon, it can be most ideal for local businesses, since Marketplace products are primarily bought and sold locally.

Facebook Video Feeds

With the video feed placement, your ads are shown in between organic videos shown on Facebook Watch and the Facebook news feed. Video Feeds are one of the many Facebook ad placement options that are great for video ad formats.

This ad placement is a great option for video ad formats that showcase your product or service, as there’s a higher likelihood viewers will already have their sound on and attention turned to the screen. However, for higher video views, consider using this placement in combination with the in-stream video placement.

Facebook In-stream Videos

In-stream video ads run within Video on Demand and select partner live streams on Facebook. In-stream Videos are one of the many Facebook ad placement options that offer a TV commercial-like experience. They can appear before, during, or after video content, and act similarly to a commercial break.

While these ads tend to have low conversion rates, they have a 10% higher incremental reach than using mobile news feed placements alone. In-stream video ads are a great placement option for video ad content in combination with other ad placements.

Facebook Stories

The Facebook Stories placement allows for your ads to show up in Facebook Stories as people scroll between story updates. Stories are one of the many Facebook ad placement options that offer a full-screen, immersive experience.

Stories are a great placement for moving image or short-form video ads (under 15 seconds), as those content types tend to catch people’s attention when they are swiping through their story feed. Because they also yield high early engagement rates, they’re also good for brand awareness and reach objectives.

Facebook Search Results

The search results ad placement puts your ads on Facebook’s search results pages, which include Facebook’s general and Marketplace search engines. Facebook ad placement options are crucial for maximizing ad effectiveness, and search results are one of these options. Ads in this placement appear just as they would in the Facebook news feed, and can exist in a variety of ad formats like video, photo, carousels or collection ads.

Note that this ad placement is currently only available on the Facebook app, so any ads you place here should be optimized for mobile.

Search results ads appear when people search for terms similar to your product—Source

This ad placement is good to use if you want to reach customers who are already searching for the products you’re selling, which could lead to higher conversion rates.

However, note that the search results pages on Facebook often present an overwhelming amount of options to people from official retailers and independent sellers, and your ad could get lost in the shuffle.

Instagram placements

Instagram Feed

Similar to Facebook news feed ads, Instagram feed ads appear to users as they scroll on their main feed. However, unlike Facebook news feed ads, they are only available on the Instagram mobile app.

These ads appear like regular Instagram feed posts, but you can add CTA buttons to these ad types.

Instagram feed ads are a great way to reach Instagram users since the Instagram news feed attracts the most traffic. They're also good for branching out from the Facebook app and maximizing your reach on the Instagram platform, given that they yield 10 times higher engagement rates than Facebook ads on average.

As you foray into running ads on Instagram, be sure your ads are visually engaging and creative, as Instagram is a visual-based app frequented by younger consumers. 

Instagram Stories

Also similar to Facebook Stories ads, Instagram Stories ads are full-screen vertical ads that appear between user stories.

Instagram Stories are a very popular surface on the platform, and tend to have higher CPCs than other placements. Instagram Stories placement is a great option to use in combination with Facebook and Instagram news feed placements in order to retarget people who are interested in your brand.  

Instagram Explore

The Instagram Explore feature allows people to discover content that is relevant to their interests based on their past behavior on the app. According to Instagram, more than 50% of accounts on Instagram use the Explore feed each month. Instagram Explore ad placements allow for ads to be embedded in the grid of content that is already designed to be relevant to users.

Since 83% of Instagram users discover new products or services on the app, and the Instagram Explore feature's main selling point is its discoverability of new content, it's an ideal placement to use in addition to other Instagram placements. Since your ads will be shown among trending content in the Explore feed, you'll want to make sure your ad creative is eye-catching and relevant.   

Instagram Shop

Instagram Shop is the platform's built-in ecommerce platforms, where companies can share and upload their product catalogues. If you set up your product catalogue on Instagram Shops, you can directly tag your products in your ads (for more on how to do this, check out Instagram's guide). 

Instagram Shop ads appear as users browse through products—Source
Instagram Shop ads appear as users browse through products—Source

Beyond setting up shop on Instagram Shops, you can also place ads here, which will appear to potential customers scrolling through the Shop feed.

Your ads will be embedded within users' suggested products, so you should make sure to include clear and engaging images of your products to draw their attention. 

Instagram Reels

Instagram Reels is a surface that debuted in 2020 as Instagram's answer to TikTok's short-form video content. Similar to how Stories ads appear when swiping in between content, Reels ads appear when swiping between videos in the Reels tab. 

Reels ads are shown in between Reels organic content - source
Reels ads are shown in between Reels organic content—Source

Short-form video or moving image ads would do best here to grab your audience's attention, but since Reels is still a new and evolving surface, it should not be your only placement option. You can reuse dynamic ad creative from Instagram Stories ads here to reinforce your reach.

Messenger

Messenger Inbox

Messenger Inbox ads appear between conversations in the home section of the Messenger app. These ads are marked as ads within a user's chat log.

You can include CTAs in these ads, which can be opened and accessed by users if you click on the ad. 

Messenger Inbox ads embedded in a user's chat history—Source
Messenger Inbox ads embedded in a user's chat history—Source

Messenger Inbox ads are an ideal placement if your business uses Messenger as a communication channel with customers. However, be sure to be conscious of not bombarding customers with too many of these ads, as they can appear obstructive in Messenger. 

Messenger Stories

Similar to Facebook and Instagram Stories, Messenger Stories ads appear in between stories shared on the Messenger platform.

Also similar to other story ad placements, your ads should be moving images or videos less than 15 seconds. 

You should use Messenger Stories ads if your business is already active on Messenger. Note that this ad placement is only available when used with Instagram Stories or Facebook Feed placements. 

Messenger sponsored messages appear in the home section of the Messenger app. These ads appear as message notifications, and when a person clicks on it, they can see the full ad with CTA buttons.

Sponsored messages that open when clicked on in Messenger—Source
Sponsored messages that open when clicked on in Messenger—Source

Messenger sponsored messages are ideal if your business uses the platform as an active communication channel with customers. Since sponsored messages look a lot like regular messages, they're good to use with customers you've engaged with already on the app or people likely to be interested in your brand. You can use them to share active promotions or specials with customers. 

Audience Network

Audience Network ads appear on external apps via the Facebook SDK, which hosts Facebook advertisers on these apps. App publishers can elect to choose ad formats that they want to integrate into their app experience. Available formats include native, banner, interstitial and rewarded video ads.

Audience Network ads are shown in apps from across a variety of industries, and the Facebook SDK places ads that are the best fit for users of a specific app. Utilizing Audience Network ad placements is a great option if you want to expand your reach past the Facebook family of apps.

Available Audience Network placements—Source
Available Audience Network placements—Source

Ad placements available through Audience Network include:

  • Banner ads, which show ads in small banners atop an app's UI
  • Native ads, which are ads embedded in an app's user experience 
  • Interstitial ads, which are video pop-ups similar to in-stream ads
  • Rewarded video ads, which are used within gaming apps

Ad types for Audience Network include image, video and carousel ads, and can apply for a variety of objectives including brand awareness, traffic, and conversions. They can be used to reach audiences you might not otherwise, but note that they often have low engagement and low-quality leads.

Consider using these ads if your business is looking to target heavy app user demographics, such as people who use gaming apps. 

We covered a lot here, and if you're feeling overwhelmed, no fear! It can be daunting to choose the right ad placements within Facebook Ads Manager, since there are so MANY to choose from. 

Since different placements work for different businesses depending on your industry, creative, and audience targeting, let metrics be your guide. Try letting Facebook do the work first with automatic placements, then review how your ads performed afterward. 

You can also conduct A/B tests to test different variables in your ads (including placements) to determine what performs best according to your goals. 

With that in mind, don't be afraid to try new placements and mix up your options to get the most exposure and leads for your brand. You got this!

Chapter 2:
Setting Up Your Facebook Ad Campaigns

What You’ll Learn: Get a high-level view of Facebook Ads structure, the components needed, and all the different options you’ll see as you set up your first ads.

 

 

Chapter 3:
Instagram Ads

What You’ll Learn: Instagram is a huge piece of the Facebook puzzle. Here you can learn about the specifics—from how to ace Instagram Ads to ad examples to tips specifically for IG.

Chapter 4:
Facebook Audiences

What You’ll Learn: The right audiences with the right offer will make or break your Facebook success, make sure you prioritize correctly.