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    How to Use Facebook Asset Customization to Tailor Your Ad Placements

    by Paul Ramondo / July 27, 2020

    Wondering how to easily fine-tune a single creative asset to Instagram and Facebook ads? Wish Facebook made this easier? You've come to the right place!

    In this article, you'll discover how to use the asset customization tool to adjust one video or image for use in ad placements across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. Learn how to assign optimized thumbnails, captions, aspect ratios, and more for placements in the Instagram and Facebook feeds, Stories, and Messenger.

    How to Use Facebook Asset Customization to Tailor Your Ad Placements by Paul Ramondo on Social Media Examiner.

    To learn how to customize one creative asset for multiple placements without leaving Ads Manager, read the article below for an easy-to-follow walkthrough or watch this video:

    Note: This article assumes you know how to set up a Facebook ad campaign. Read this article for step-by-step instructions.

    #1: Upload Your Ad Creative

    The first thing you need is a piece of creative for your ad. You can select content from your Instagram profile or Facebook page or upload something fresh from your desktop. For this example, I'm going to use a video that's already been uploaded to my Facebook page.

    Hop into Ads Manager and navigate to the ad level of the ad set of your campaign. On the Create Ad tab under Media, click on Add Media and select Add Video.

    Add Video option in Facebook Ads Manager

    Now select your video. In this case, I'll navigate to my page videos and click on the latest video.

    select video for Facebook ad

    After you click Continue, you'll see a preview of what your video will look like across multiple ad placements.

    ad previews for multiple Facebook and Instagram ad placements

    This particular video is 1080 x 1080 pixels so it's taking up a decent chunk of real estate on the news feed. Currently, the maximum amount of space you can capture vertically in the Facebook and Instagram feeds is 1350 pixels high by 1080 pixels wide.

    Now populate your ad with some text to support the video creative and select a call-to-action (CTA) button. I've chosen not to use a CTA button for this example because I only want people to watch the video or engage with the ad. I don't want to send them offsite; that's not my goal.

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    Here's the ad creative uploaded natively for 1080 x 1080 pixels. If you look at the ad preview on the right, you'll notice that Pokémon is the video thumbnail on the ad. That's not what I want to use. It's just a little meme that I included inside the creative.

    add primary text for Facebook video ad

    To change the thumbnail, click on Edit Video.

    Edit Video option for Facebook video ad

    In the window that appears, click on Thumbnail in the Media section at the top left. From here, you can let Facebook automatically choose your thumbnail or select your own. I prefer to choose a custom thumbnail to have more creative control so click on Custom.

    select custom thumbnail for Facebook video ad

    Now choose the thumbnail that best represents what your ad is about. After you make your selection, click Save.

    select custom thumbnail for Facebook video ad

    You can see that my thumbnail is now relevant because it no longer reflects a Pokémon meme.

    preview thumbnail for Facebook video ad

    #2: Select the Ad Placement You Want to Customize

    The next step is to customize your video for individual ad placements. The placements that you can customize will be based on those you selected at the ad set level.

    To customize by placement, click the Select a Placement to Customize drop-down menu and select an option. Let's start by clicking on the first one—Instagram Feed.

    Select a Placement to Customize drop-down menu in Ads Manager

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    Choosing this option brings up the Instagram feed placement for you to customize. You can edit the thumbnail, video length, size, and crop the video and closed captions. You can also add a text overlay and logo overlay for each placement.

    customize creative options for Facebook video ad

    Now we'll walk through a few of these customizations.

    #3: Crop Your Ad Creative

    In the preview below, you can see what my video creative looks like in the Instagram feed. It's currently 1080 x 1080 pixels, which means it's capturing a decent amount of real estate inside the Instagram feed. But let's say we want to capture a bit more space when people are scrolling.

    To modify the video, select the Crop option under Media.

    crop Facebook ad creative by placement

    Now change the crop to 4:5, for instance. This is a maximum of 1350 pixels high by 1080 pixels across. On the right, you can see a preview of what the video will look like after it's cropped.

    crop Facebook ad creative to 4:5

    If it looks okay, click Apply to save your changes. It will take about 30 seconds or so for Ads Manager to crop the video.

    #4: Adjust Your Ad Creative for Stories

    Because my video is about 1:50 minutes long, it's not the best type of creative to run on an Instagram story. So I want to customize the creative and change it out.

    The reason I want to do this is that if you look at the preview, a lot is going on in the ad—closed captions for the video, the video itself, and the ad copy. You can clean this up by changing the creative to a static image for Instagram Stories only.

    Start by selecting the Change option at the top left.

    change Facebook ad creative by placement

    Next, I'm going to go into Page Images and choose a photo I uploaded to my Facebook page last week. Now I have a custom piece of creative for Instagram Stories.

    change Facebook ad creative to static image

    If you want to play around with this image a little bit more, click Crop and change it to, say, Vertical 9:16. Then click Save.

    crop Facebook ad creative to Vertical 9:16

    You can see the new cropped image for the Instagram Stories placement below.

    It's important to double-check your ad creative before you publish it so click the Edit button to do that.

    edit Instagram Stories placement in Facebook Ads Manager

    If you look at the preview, you can see that this image doesn't make sense as an ad. When I cropped it to 9:16, it removed the CTA text at the bottom, which means I'll just be running an image ad without any context for the viewer.

    edit Instagram Stories placement in Facebook Ads Manager

    To fix this, I'm going to go back to the original size of the image.

    ALT

    Now that you know how to customize Instagram Stories as a placement, you can repeat this process to customize the assets for other individual placements. It's as easy as that.

    Pro Tip: When you export a photo or video file, keep all of your text inside the middle of the 1080 x 1080 pixel cropping box. If you don't—as in the video below—when you go to crop it, it removes the text on the outside, which isn't a great user experience.

    crop media in Facebook Ads Manager

    Conclusion

    Facebook's asset customization tool makes it easy to take one piece of creative and customize it for multiple placements without ever leaving Ads Manager. You can choose a custom thumbnail, edit captions, adjust video length, crop your image or video, and more for placements in the Instagram and Facebook feeds, Stories, and Messenger.

    What do you think? Have you tried Facebook's asset customization tool? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

    More articles on Facebook and Instagram ads:

    • Learn how to use Facebook's split test feature to reveal how best to distribute your ad spend on Facebook and Instagram.
    • Discover how to remarket to website visitors with dynamic product ads using Facebook Ads Manager.
    • Find out how to retarget ads to engaged Instagram and Facebook fans.
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    Tags: Facebook, Facebook Ads, Facebook Ads Manager, Instagram Ads

    About the authorPaul Ramondo

    Paul Ramondo teaches entrepreneurs how to generate leads and sales using Facebook Ads and digital marketing funnels. Click here to download his latest Facebook Ads Case Study.
    Other posts by Paul Ramondo »

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