A few months ago, Facebook announced that we were testing a new solution called leads ads that gives people a quick and privacy-conscious way to sign up to receive information from businesses.

Now leads ads are available to advertisers everywhere with a host of additional features that make signing up for business information easy for people and more valuable for businesses.

Find the people that want to hear from your business

Whether businesses want to encourage people to sign up for their newsletter, an offer, an event or more information about their product, lead ads simplify the mobile signup process.

When someone clicks on your lead ad, a form opens with the person's contact information automatically populated, based on the information they share with Facebook, like their name and email address. Automatically populating the contact information that people share with Facebook makes filling in the form as fast as two taps: one click on the ad to open the form and another to submit the auto-filled form. Like all of Facebook’s ad types, lead ads were built with privacy in mind.

New to lead ads since testing started is the ability for businesses to customize lead ad forms with open-ended questions or multiple choice questions, so they receive the information that matters most to their business.

How to set up lead ads

Simply choose your ad creative, set your targeting and bidding type and then customize your form fields.

Retrieve and respond to leads in real-time 

The easiest and fastest way to retrieve lead information is to set up lead ads to sync with a CRM solution from one of the integrated marketing platforms. If you work with one of the integrated marketing platforms, you can collect lead information in real-time, helping you keep up with customer expectations that once they reach out to a business, they will hear back quickly.

You can also collect leads in real-time by setting up a custom integration between your CRM and the Facebook API. Or you can download lead information manually into a CSV file.

Advertisers with the Facebook pixel implemented on their website can set lead ads to be shown to people who are likely to sign up for information and are also able to measure cost-per-conversion from lead ads.

Who's using lead ads? 

A bookstore could use leads ads to promote a book on pre-sale, while an automaker could encourage people to get a quote on a car.

Land Rover made use of lead ads to offer their target audience a seamless experience across devices, so they had to make it easy for people on mobile to request a car quote.

“In early A/B testing, Facebook's native lead ads outperformed link ads driving to the website to fill out a lead form in terms of total leads and conversion rate, while driving a 4x reduction in cost per lead compared to previous social lead generation tactics,” Kim Kyaw, manager, digital marketing & social media, Land Rover.

Start collecting leads

To start hearing from your customers on mobile, set up a lead ad in Power Editor or talk to a Facebook marketing partner.

In the coming weeks, leads ads will be available in new formats, including video and carousel, and also available on desktop, so businesses can collect ads from people on any device.