Your product ads, placement by placement

How the catalogue product ads look today in Stories and Reels, and how they could look if each product had a photo made for each placement.

How they show today

These are Meta's own previews of two of your long-running product ads. Each product only has one square photo, so in the full-screen placements Meta shrinks it and fills the rest of the screen.

TodayFacebook Story preview
Facebook StoriesThe photo sits in the middle with a grey band underneath.
TodayInstagram Reels preview
Instagram ReelsFour small product tiles with white borders, then a black screen below.
TodayInstagram Story preview
Instagram StoriesOne product framed in white, with smaller tiles underneath.
TodayFacebook feed preview
Facebook feedWorks, but each card carries white bars down both sides.

What it could look like

Meta lets each product carry extra photos, each marked for a placement. It then picks the right one automatically. Mock-ups below, cropped from your existing photography.

Mock-up
Story mock-up, beanbag
hydeandhare Sponsored
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Stories and Reels: full screen (9:16)The product fills the whole screen, no grey or white.
Mock-up
Story mock-up, rug
hydeandhare Sponsored
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Stories and Reels: full screen (9:16)Same product, same photo shoot, just cropped for the screen.
Mock-up
hydeandhare Sponsored
Feed mock-up
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Feed: tall (4:5)Takes up more of the screen than a square, with no white bars.

Carousel cards

When Meta adds your products under an image or video ad, it shows them as square cards. Nothing gets cut off today, but the white bars make every product look smaller than it is.

Today
Hyde & Hare Sponsored

Sheepskin Rug, Vole

Giant Beanbag, Vole

The tall photo padded to a square with white.
Mock-up
Hyde & Hare Sponsored

Sheepskin Rug, Vole

Giant Beanbag, Vole

A square crop: the product fills the card.

One product, three shapes

What each product would carry. Meta uses the square for carousel cards, the 4:5 in feed and the 9:16 in Stories and Reels.

Square (1:1)Carousel cards
Tall (4:5)Facebook and Instagram feed
Full screen (9:16)Stories and Reels
What we'd need
  1. The 20 or so products that do most of the selling, in all three shapes, or
  2. your go-ahead for us to crop them from the photography already on your site, as above.

We'd then add them to your product catalogue and rebuild the product ads to use them. The rest of the range carries on as it is.