Facebook touts more immersive mobile advertising to Cannes crowd

[CANNES] Facebook Inc previewed a number of new ad formats for its mobile-phone platform, developed with advertising agencies in a bid to lure more users push products on the site.

Facebook's Chief Creative Officer Mark D'Arcy demonstrated a number of campaigns the company helped develop for brands such as J Crew, Amazon, Coke and Poland's Lot Airlines. The company's shares were up 2.6 per cent to US$86.90 at 1:12 pm in New York trading, having earlier risen as much as 3.3 percent to a record and giving Facebook a value of $244 billion.

"We live in a world with personalised feeds and we like to think when we look at them they are built for us," Mr D'Arcy said at a news conference at the Cannes Lions advertising festival on Tuesday. The social network worked with agencies to embed short films, photos and videos to engage users on a deeper and more personal level than traditional display and banner ads, he said.

Facebook, which registers 4 billion video views daily, is touting its site, and that of its Instagram platform, as a canvas that ad agencies can tell stories and experiment with: brand-sponsored photography, videos that allow users to swipe for panoramas, funny short films and spectacular still photos.

Facebook is in Cannes this week with a staff of more than 200 marketing its services to advertisers and brands. Chief Product Officer Chris Cox earlier gave a keynote address at the ad industry's largest annual gathering. Mr Cox highlighted a number of apps that users can turn to to curate their own content, including My Idol, Instagram and Meipai. Facebook said that 73 per cent of its revenue currently comes from mobile advertising.

Facebook today also updated its Instagram app's "explore" section to have more focus on live events, organising photos by time taken and hashtags in competition with Twitter Inc and Snapchat Inc.

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