Facebook Canvas Remix

Mobile ads can be a painful experience. They can stop you dead in your tracks for all the wrong reasons. Take a moment to think through what that means. Agency designers found Facebook too creatively restrictive. Mobile ads can be painful. But they don’t have to be. Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. I’m excited about what we’ve built. I know I’m not alone.We wanted to build a natural and familiar experience: fast, fun, and rewarding. This hinted a way forward for the creation tool: modularity.We affectionately started calling it the other space. The other space crystalized when we found the sweet spot of these two goals: a flexible tool where we were able to control the variables. We make sure that ads feel at home, without delivering anything valuable to you. We drew inspiration from all sorts of places. That became Canvas. But flat navigation also keeps things easier to create — it’s much easier to conceptualize something linear than more complex multi-page hierarchies. The value of a good story is too often overlooked. An advertiser has the creative flexibility to construct a narrative with the blocks that best meet their goals. Last April, we started the process of finding partners to begin public alpha tests. We led brainstorms and white-boarding sessions with agencies and brands that were unconstrained by the limits of our existing patterns. Think of Volkwagen’s Think Small, Apple’s Mac vs. PC, Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man in the World. They connect on a personal level, hitting on some universal truth. Today, Facebook announced that Canvas is available to our advertisers worldwide.
But we’re not finished. Take a moment to think through what that means.