Meta launches Ads Super Burst and tests First Impression Ads for brand advertisers

CALIFORNIA: Four products, one pitch: be unforgettable. Meta has expanded its brand advertising solutions with Ads Super Burst, a test of First Impression Ads, a wider Reels Trending Ads line-up and an early trial of a new way to measure short form video. The announcements came at the Meta Brand Building Summit.

The logic is simple. The brands people remember tend to show up inside the most memorable moments: the game everyone is discussing, the show everyone is watching and the trend that goes from niche to everywhere in a weekend. Increasingly, those moments play out in short form video, which is central to how people use Meta’s apps. Reels make up more than half of all time spent on Instagram.

Meta has the data to back the pitch. Some 71 per cent of people say Meta has the most influence in shaping the cultural trends they follow. Across a study of more than 1,000 global campaigns, Meta built awareness 18 per cent better than the average brand channel and drove a 73 per cent lift in consideration. The new products are designed to help advertisers and agencies tap into cultural moments, reach the right people, earn their attention and turn that attention into lasting brand memory.

Ads Super Burst: reserve the hours that matter most

Most brands have a few moments a year that matter more than the rest, such as a product launch, an awards night or the first weekend of a new sports season. Ads Super Burst lets advertisers book a window of 3 to 24 hours and reach their audience at TV-like scale inside it. With category exclusivity available, no other advertiser in the same category can book that window.

Campaigns can be planned in Reach Planner, which secures inventory for the chosen dates and gives an estimate of reach and price, with guaranteed delivery tied to those estimates.

The early results are strong. Advertisers testing Ads Super Burst over the past few months saw a median 2.9 point lift in ad recall and a 0.6 point lift in intent, reaching a median of 34 million people per flight. That equals 14 per cent of the US adult online audience in a single day. Ads Super Burst moves to general availability this month, rolling out in phases.

Kathryn Quart, vice-president, planning, Spark Foundry, said: “Ads super burst helped us solve a challenge for our client: how to ensure a priority, time-sensitive message had guaranteed visibility with our target audience within a short window. Our 12-hour activation was seamless to execute, delivered strong reach among our target audience, and performed exactly as expected. Based on that success, we’ve recommended leveraging ads super burst again during the busy and competitive Holiday season, with an even more concentrated messaging window to maximize impact within a priority timeframe.”

First Impression Ads: the first ad people see

Advertisers have asked for the first ad position in Feed for years, and Meta is now testing it in the United States. The first ad someone sees when they open their Feed carries a prominence no other placement offers. It is an early test, with just one brand per day, but advertiser feedback suggests there is appetite for the product.

Reels Trending Ads: show up next to what people are already watching

Reels Trending Ads let businesses place an ad immediately after the most-watched and most culturally relevant Reels on Facebook and Instagram. They have been performing well. In campaigns that included them, action intent rose by more than five percentage points versus control groups with no campaign exposure, and the ads delivered an incremental five percentage point lift in unaided brand awareness.

Meta expanded access to all advertisers last year and has kept building the product. Advertisers can now choose from 15 always-on standard topics, including new categories around Home and Garden and Spanish language content. There are also seasonal line-ups built around moments that pull people together, such as the holidays and the start of football and basketball seasons. Those are the weeks when fandom and family are at their loudest, and a brand that shows up well is remembered long after the moment passes.

Targeting is also expanding, including custom audience exclusions later this year, giving brands more control over who they reach with Reels Trending Ads.

Aggregated View Time: a more holistic view of video view time

For years, the digital media industry has treated a long video view as a sign that an ad worked, because that is how television worked. Short form video is different, and people do not watch videos and brand content on social the same way. Someone may see a brand for two seconds in a feed, one second the next day and two more seconds on Thursday.

Meta’s research found that five seconds of attention added up over a week drove 32 per cent more offline sales than one continuous five-second view. Independent industry research found the same pattern: looking at views in accumulated seconds can predict outcomes better than focusing on one long view.

That is why Meta is in the early stages of testing Aggregated View Time, a way to measure and optimise the total time someone spends with a brand across a week, rather than each impression on its own. The product is in alpha. The goal is to help brands build long-term brand memory the way short form delivers it, in many small moments that add up over time.

Meta says it is excited to bring these products to market and to give advertisers solutions that help them meet their objectives, wherever they sit in the funnel.