If you are in digital marketing or advertising, chances are that you’ve heard the term “lightbox ads”. Interestingly enough, very few actually know what they look like, and even fewer know how to create them.

First thing’s first, a lightbox ad is an expandable creative asset that will take over a majority of your screen if you hover over its “thumbnail” for a couple seconds. It’s not a CPC model as most of us are accustomed to.

Once the user is shown the lightbox ad, it’s an extremely interactive ad type and allows for much more engagement than any pop up or banner ads.

As advertisers, we can leverage multiple images and video assets as creatives within the lightbox along with descriptions and different landing pages.

Difference between Display and Lightbox ads

Normal Display campaigns are used to generate the leads or traffic. But Lightbox ads are used for Engagement. Engagement means brand awareness.

Lightbox can be used for different industry, but it depends on the Campaigns objective. e.g. If you want brand promotion though video ads, you can use it.

It is also used for eCommerce client. You can run the Catalog Lightbox ads, where you can display Catalog of products.

How to create Lightbox Ad?

First, navigate to the Ads tab within a campaign. Click +Ad and select Ad Gallery. From there you’ll be given the option to choose “Lightbox ad”.

If you or your client has strong video assets, you may want to use those along with images. This creates a more engaging experience.

After you pick which Lightbox ad format you want to use, you are able to easily manipulate how the ad looks by adding rich media and imagery to catch users eyes.

Once you’ve reached the Setup screen, the process is very intuitive.

One of my favorite features is the ability to upload images in your ad straight from your website – meaning you don’t even need to download or generate creative content; you can literally swap it in from your site.

Why should you start using Lightbox ads and what should you use it for?

First of all, your target audience will be more interested and considered more qualitative as they have to hover over the Lightbox ad first in order to expand it.

Furthermore, the product feed asset allows people to browse information about and engage with your products in a very visual way.

Your audience will therefore be provided with a deeper experience to learn about and understand your products.

What is Shoppable Lightbox?

Shoppable Lightbox is the new brother in the Lightbox ad family. There is already Image and Video Lightbox that can be used to boost engagement with your audience in a very visual and fun way.

Shoppable Lightbox can be used in the exact same way with the exception that you don’t have to upload visuals or videos yourself, but link and filter products from the Merchant Center.

The main principle is that when the user hovers over the Lightbox ad for a couple of seconds, the ad expands and several interactions are being triggered.