• by Tanya Gazdik , December 10, 2015

Carnival Cruise Line is launching a mobile ad unit designed to give consumers the chance to experience elements of a Carnival cruise.

As the only brand within the cruise category to participate in this Facebook beta test, Carnival and global creative agency Arnold Worldwide partnered to create an experience that would tap into a vacation-seeker’s feeling of wanderlust prior to heading into the holiday season.

The mobile-only Canvas ad unit displays a combination of text, images, videos, and GIFs to create an experience that allows a user to engage with content by tapping, displaying the content in a similar style to the platform’s Instant Articles.

The goal of the execution is to bring the experience of cruising to life on-screen. One of the biggest draws of a cruise vacation is getting to experience multiple destinations, excursions and experiences in a single trip; as such, Carnival’s Immersive Canvas allows a user to scroll from port to port from the same unit.

Arnold Worldwide, the brand’s advertising agency, worked closely with Facebook to “hack” functionality of the unit. By using things like tilt-to-pan functionality on a scuba-diving video, for example, one of Carnival’s excursions almost becomes a piece of augmented reality. For an audience who may be new to cruising, this type of immersive experience gives a unique, firsthand glimpse into what it’s like to take a Carnival Cruise vacation, says Stephanie Evans-Greene, vice president of marketing, Carnival Cruise Line.

“The Canvas unit gives Facebook users a mini vacation right in their newsfeeds, giving them a taste of one of the many itineraries Carnival has to offer,” Evans-Greene says. “The same way our guests can unpack once and visit multiple destinations, a Facebook user can scroll from port to port without ever leaving the unit.”