Flexible Ads Are Replacing Dynamic Creatives on Meta

If you want to simplify your ad campaigns and boost engagement, the new Meta ad format is here to save the day. It’s a tool that tailors your ad formats on the fly, showing your audience the most engaging version of your content. 

Sounds great, right? Let’s unpack what this new feature means for your campaigns and how you can make the most of it.

What is the flexible ad format?

Meta's latest innovation, the flexible ad format, uses predictive learning to tailor your ads automatically. It optimizes your content to show the best-performing format for each viewer based on placement and audience. That means you can upload up to 10 images or videos, and Meta will decide whether to display a single image, video, or carousel based on what works best.

Why should you care?

The primary benefit of this new format is more automation and less effort on your part. No more guessing or testing different ad formats manually. With the flexible ad format, Meta does the heavy lifting for you, which allows you to focus more on creating great content and less on tweaking ads for different placements.

How to create a flexible ad in Meta Ads Manager

Ready to give it a shot? Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating your first flexible ad:

1. Go to Meta Ads Manager and click ‘Create campaign.’

2. Select ‘App promotion’ or ‘Sales’ as your ad objective. Then, click ‘Continue.’

3. Choose between an Advantage+ shopping campaign setup or building your campaign manually.

4. If you selected ‘Sales’ as your campaign objective earlier, scroll down and toggle off ‘Use a catalog.’ Then, click ‘Next.’ (Skip this step if you selected ‘App promotion.’)

5. For ‘Sales’ objectives, go to the conversion section and select either Website or App as your conversion location. (Skip this step if you selected ‘App promotion.’)

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6. Set your budget and schedule.

7. Ensure the audience location is correct. You can also automatically allow Meta to find an audience according to your audience suggestion. Tap ‘Next’ once done.

8. Under ‘Ad setup,’ select ‘Flexible’ as your Meta ad format.

9. Add images or videos from the dropdown menu in the ad creative section. You can also select from existing media. Afterward, fill in your primary text, headline, and description. Under ‘Destination,’ enter the website URL you want people to visit after clicking on your ad. Once done, click ‘Continue.’

10. Lastly, make sure you set your Meta Pixel and URL parameters to track where your ad’s traffic is coming from. Our comprehensive guide has the steps for setting up a Meta Pixel. When done, hit the ‘Publish’ button.

Differences from dynamic creative

You might wonder how this differs if you’re familiar with Meta dynamic creative. Both tools allow you to mix and match ad elements for the best performance, but flexible ad format offers real-time optimization, creating single image/video and carousel ads automatically. 

Unlike dynamic creative, which operates at the ad set level, Meta controls this flexible advertising format within individual ads. That means more precise optimization and potentially better results.

Current limitations

Currently, the flexible ad format from Meta is available only for App Promotion and Sales objectives. However, Meta is working on expanding this to other campaign objectives. 

Additionally, there’s no option to customize placement, and Meta has yet to provide specific guidelines regarding the ideal dimensions for images or videos within the flexible format. Square images are the best bet since they fit nicely into carousels. We’ll keep you posted as further Meta updates become available. 

What this means for your campaigns

With the introduction of the flexible ad format, Meta is pushing towards more automation powered by AI. This new feature could reduce the number of ads you need within an ad set by adapting multiple creatives into one ad. You can expect a simplified ad management process that allows you to focus more on and less on execution.

Ad creation’s a piece of cake with Madgicx 🍰

Struggling to keep up with your ad creation needs? Madgicx’s Creative Workflow handles your design, taking the weight off your shoulders (almost) completely. Inside the Creative Workflow, you’ll find Madgicx’s Ad Library, offering bucketfuls of ad inspiration for you to browse and save.

Hand off your ad brief to our design experts, who will deliver high-quality ads in just 48 hours. Once approved, your ads are automatically loaded into Meta Ads Manager, ready for launch. Give Madgicx a try and see how it can effortlessly boost your campaign production. Start your 7-day free trial now.