• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, June 26, 2014

Facebook on Thursday introduced a new ad option that lets marketers showcase three different products in a single ad unit in retargeting campaigns on the social network.

“Say, you’re an online retailer that’s looking to reach people that browsed your site without making a purchase. Combining the multi-product ad unit with Custom Audiences from your Web site, you can produce a carousel of different items -- like handbags, sundresses and sandals -- to show in News Feed to specific audiences,” stated a Facebook for Business blog post.

The company added that e-commerce company Nomorerack saw click-through rates increase as much as 42% and its cost per acquisition decrease between 42% and 45%, using that approach. Facebook said the multi-product ads are available worldwide through the Facebook Ads API. It plans to extend the multi-product offering to other ad formats later this year.

In addition, Facebook announced several enhancements to its Custom Audiences retargeting tool. These include a new feature in Ads Manager and Power Editor that lets advertisers build specific kinds of audiences, like people who have visited their site in a while, or certain pages of the site.

Retailers and other companies will also be able to build targeted segments for different products in their catalog, as well as have another new option to create audiences, based on past activity on their Web site. The changes will be rolled out in the coming weeks.

Facebook recently also launched a tool called the Facebook Pixel Helper—a Chrome extension that “automatically troubleshoots” problems with Custom Audience and conversion pixels installed on their sites.