Twitter Debuts Carousel Ads To Drive Web Traffic Forward

After a period of beta testing, in November 2020, Twitter announced the addition of Carousel Ads, a new addition to its platform’s ad format options, which contain 2 to 6 horizontally swipeable images or videos. Though carousel ads are a popular ad format option available on the other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram, it’s new to the Twitter platform.

What are Carousel Ads?

Introduced lately to the popular microblogging site, Carousel ads is a new and interactive ad format that is now available to all advertisers, globally. It aims to give mobile marketers more flexibility with their ad creativity by letting them drive users to app downloads or specific products on websites or by telling a brand story in several images or videos. They are designed to help marketers to reach new audiences and drive people to their website or app through 2 to 6 images or videos — all within a single advertisement.

Any Twitter advertiser can create Carousel ads through Tweet Composer in Ads Manager or through the Ads API. Once created, they are also able to use them either organically or promoted.

NOTE: Advertisers don’t have to run the carousel format as an ad, they can post it and let it reach their audience organically without spending any money.

The carousel ad format includes an edge-to-edge design (that allows users to easily change across cards), third-party measurement reporting, accessibility support and enhanced analytics – on individual cards, swipes, and more.

Benefits of Carousel Ads

1. It engages audiences with the edge-to-edge design that allows people to spend more time looking at and interacting with your ad which, at the very minimum, helps with brand awareness.

2. As Carousels are available across all Website & App objectives, as well as Video Views when using Video Carousels, it helps advertisers to achieve a variety of goals such as web traffic, engagement, brand awareness, and so on. This new ad format can also be used in Engagement and Awareness campaigns.

3. Carousel ads are easy to create, as it follows the same few steps and creative specifications as Twitter’s other image & video formats, which allows advertisers time to focus on creativity and their story.

4. Similar to other ads, Twitter offers analytics and strong metrics to help you test and learn.  These features also help advertisers understand the ad performance (that includes card-level & swipe reporting).

 Why Carousel Ads Have Been A Popular Choice For Marketers?

As we had mentioned above, Carousel ads have been a popular choice for marketers advertising on other social platforms for many years, especially on Facebook and Instagram. Have you thought about why this is? 

It’s because, while using Carousel Ads, marketers are seeing positive results. To prove this point, let’s check out few Carousel ad studies:

1. A report from Sprout Social noted that Carousel ads on Facebook and Instagram drive 10 times more web traffic for businesses than the counter single-image ads.

2. A Facebook study reports that Carousel ads drive a 72% higher click-through rate than single images, where these ads (on average) deliver positive results and advertisers love having the option to use this format.

All these positive results made Twitter think about upgrading its ad format options. But then before making a blind decision, Twitter wanted to make sure that these stats and success stories would work on Twitter as well as it has on other platforms. So, for checking that, Twitter ran broad tests prior-to-launch which, ultimately, proved its value.

According to a Mobile Marketer reports Twitter says that they were encouraged by the strong results they saw during their Beta testing of Carousel Ads, which shows:

1. An average of 15% boost in click-through rate (CTR) relative to single-asset formats – for Website Carousels ads.

2. An average of 24% boost in installs per impression relative to single-asset formats – for App Carousels ads.

Among both, testing results for app carousel ads were much stronger.

Carousel Ads Creative Best Practices

Twitter also highlighted some creative best-practices that marketers/advertisers should follow while using carousel ad formats. They are:

1. Use all of the available components, including visuals (capture attention), headlines, descriptions, and calls-to-action – that give context and encourage the user to take the next step.

2. To keep users engaged, craft a visual that tells a story, that is create a visual narrative with a beginning, middle, and end.

3. Always consider the audience, target your carousel ads to a specific segment of your market and tailor your assets accordingly. While targeting people who have visited product pages on your website or app try to use product imagery.

4. When you are advertising in carousels, highlight the product and its benefits. The product should be visible with clear, simple communication by telling people why they should buy your product instead of just showing them an image of it.

Twitter is building a more effective performance advertising business and the debut of carousel ads is just an early step towards it. They are also increasing their investment across various initiatives, including updates to Twitter Mobile App objectives, such as stronger bidding and optimization options. There will also be enhancements to the Twitter Website Tag that aims to drive up the accuracy of key advertiser campaign metrics, such as return on ad spend, and improved creative advertising formats.