• by Jamie Tedford , Op-Ed Contributor, August 12, 2015

Facebook recently introduced a new technology designed to help brands and agencies deliver Facebook advertising faster than ever.

By selecting accelerated delivery during campaign setup, you can now tell Facebook to spend the budget and deliver the ads as quickly as possible, without losing control of the overall budget cap. When accelerated delivery is used, Facebook enters the full bid amount to help advertisers win more auctions earlier in their campaigns.

As a Facebook Marketing Partner, we had the opportunity to test this technology extensively before its release. For one fashion client, we were able to bring the energy of live runway shows into the News Feed in near-real time.

Testing accelerated delivery with our partners gave us a chance to compile a set of clear best practices for accelerated delivery. So when should advertisers use accelerated delivery?

1) To bring live events into the News Feed. Whether you’re hosting a runway show during Fashion Week or trying to boost the reach of your sponsorship of a major sporting event, Facebook is the place to bring live events online, and accelerated delivery is a great way to make it happen in near-real time.

2) To drive awareness at key business moments. If you’re unveiling a product, launching a seasonal sale or releasing a new film, you want awareness of the news to swell fast. Accelerated delivery can ensure your Facebook ads play their role in the marketing mix in these scenarios.

3) To deliver flash sales to large audiences. If you’re an ecommerce provider, chances are you occasionally need to move inventory fast. Accelerated delivery is a great way to boost product and pricing awareness, saturating relevant audiences quickly without forfeiting your ability to shut the ads off in a hurry if products sell out.

4) To maximize conversions at a specific cost-per-conversion. If you’ve found a cost-effective combination of targeting and ad creative that’s driving your app installs or online conversions efficiently, the next question you’ll want to answer is, “How many conversions can we drive per cycle before the cost-per begins to go up?” Accelerated delivery will help you answer that question quickly. 

Accelerated delivery can make the average cost-per-impression, click, action or conversion higher than your previous benchmarks. But if your campaigns are well-monitored and optimized, the benefits outweigh the costs in every scenario described above.

If you’ve been waiting in the wings for Facebook advertising to become “a real thing,” then accelerated delivery offers yet another reason for you to accelerate your own adoption of this powerful advertising channel. With innovation like this hitting the market, measurable ROI is more than within reach — returns are arriving fast.