How to Create Facebook Canvas

A Facebook Instant Experience, now officially called an Instant Experience, is one of the most powerful and underutilized ad formats available to marketers. This walkthrough guides you through planning, building, and launching a beautiful, fullscreen mobile experience that captures attention and drives action. We'll cover everything from storyboarding your ad to optimizing it for peak performance.

What is a Facebook Instant Experience (Formerly Canvas)?

Think of a Facebook Instant Experience as a mini website that lives right inside a Facebook or Instagram ad. When a user on their phone taps your ad, it doesn’t send them to a slow-loading external landing page. Instead, it opens a full-screen, native experience instantly within the app.

This immersive format loads up to 15 times faster than a standard mobile website, removing the friction that causes most people to bounce. You can combine videos, images, carousels, text blocks, product catalogs, and buttons to create a rich, interactive brand narrative or a seamless shopping experience.

The main benefits are clear:

• Blazing Fast Speed: They load almost instantly, keeping users engaged who would have otherwise dropped off while waiting for a webpage.
• Immersive Storytelling: The full-screen, vertical format eliminates distractions and lets you tell a compelling story with mixed media.
• Lower Drop-Off Rates: By keeping users within the Facebook or Instagram app (where they’re already comfortable), you reduce an extra step and increase the chances they’ll follow through on your call-to-action.
• Total Creative Freedom: You can guide a user’s journey from a captivating video to a product-filled carousel and end with a clear “Shop Now” button, all in one seamless flow.

Before You Build: Planning Your Instant Experience Strategy

A powerful tool is only effective with a solid strategy behind it. Before you even open Meta Ads Manager, take a few minutes to lay the groundwork. A little planning here will save you tons of time and result in a much better-performing ad.

1. Define Your Objective

What do you want to accomplish with this ad? Every creative decision you make should support this one goal. Are you trying to:

• Generate leads? Your Instant Experience should highlight benefits a user gets from signing up and end with a clear, compelling call-to-action (CTA) button linked to your form.
• Sell products? Build your experience around beautiful product imagery, lifestyle shots in a carousel, and integrate your product catalog for easy shopping.
• Build brand awareness? Focus on telling a deeper story. Use video and well-written text blocks to showcase your brand’s mission, values, or unique process.

Knowing your goal helps you choose the right template and components later on.

2. Storyboard The User Journey

Don't just throw assets together. Think of your Instant Experience as a short story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Grab a piece of paper or open a notepad and sketch out the flow.

Example Storyboard (for a clothing brand):

1. Hook (Beginning): Start with an engaging, auto-playing video of a model wearing the new summer collection.
2. Explore (Middle): Follow the video with a carousel showcasing individual pieces from the collection, each image tagged with its name and price.
3. Details (Middle): Add a text block below the carousel to talk about the sustainable materials used in the fabric.
4. Social Proof (Middle): Follow that with a single stunning, user-generated photo of a customer wearing one of the outfits.
5. Action (End): End with a bold, full-width “Shop The Collection” button that links to your e-commerce store.

This simple exercise ensures your ad has purpose and guides the user logically towards your goal.

3. Gather Your Assets

Now, collect everything you need before you start building. Having all your files in one folder makes the creation process smooth and fast.

You’ll need:

• Photos: High-resolution single images (for Photo components) and multiple coordinated images (for Carousels). Aim for a vertical 1080x1920px format for best results.
• Videos: Short, engaging videos optimized for mobile - vertical format is a must. Remember sound will be off by default, so use captions if needed.
• Copy: Your headlines, body text, and button text, all neatly typed out.
• Logo: A transparent PNG version of your brand’s logo for the header.
• Links: The destination URLs for your website, product pages, or landing pages.

How to Create a Facebook Instant Experience: A Step-by-Step Guide

Once your planning is done and your assets are ready, it’s time to build the ad inside Meta Ads Manager.

Step 1: Get Started in Meta Ads Manager

Navigate to Meta Ads Manager and click the green "+ Create" button to start a new campaign. You’ll be prompted to choose a campaign objective.

Instant Experiences are available for most objectives, but they work best with:

• Brand Awareness
• Reach
• Traffic
• Engagement
• Conversions
• Catalog Sales

Select the objective that matches the goal you defined earlier.

Step 2: Set Up Your Ad Set

Configure your Ad Set as you normally would: define your audience, budget, and schedule. The most important setting here is Placements. Instant Experiences are a mobile-only format. Make sure your placements include Facebook Feeds, Instagram Feed, and other mobile-friendly spots. You can choose "Advantage+ placements" or manually select them.

Step 3: Design the Ad That Triggers the Experience

At the Ad level, you'll create the initial ad unit that users see in their feed - the image or video they tap to open the full-screen experience.

After uploading your primary media and writing your headline and ad copy, scroll down to the Destination section. Here, you'll see a checkbox for "Add an Instant Experience." Check this box.

You now have two choices: use a template or build from scratch.

Step 4: Choose a Template (The Easiest Starting Point)

If you're new to Instant Experiences, using a template is the fastest way to get started. Meta offers several options tailored to common goals:

• Customer Acquisition: A clean layout designed to drive conversions, featuring multiple CTAs.
• Storefront: The best choice for e-commerce brands, displaying a grid of products from your catalog.
• Lookbook: Perfect for fashion and lifestyle brands, letting you feature products in context with lifestyle imagery.
• Storytelling: A flexible template that prioritizes brand narrative through a mix of video and text.

Select a template and Ads Manager will open a pre-filled editor. All you have to do is replace the placeholder content with your own text, images, and videos.

Step 5: Build a Custom Experience from Scratch

For complete creative control, select "Build a custom Instant Experience." This opens up a blank canvas where you can add and arrange components as you see fit.

Key Components You Can Add:

• Button: Your call-to-action. You can customize the text, color, and destination URL. Use these generously to guide users.
• Carousel: A horizontally swipeable gallery of up to 10 images. Each image can have its own unique link, making it perfect for showcasing multiple products or features.
• Photo: A single, high-quality image. You can add a link to it, and by using an image wider than the screen, you can enable a cool "tilt-to-pan" functionality.
• Text Block: For your headlines, subheadings, and body copy. Use this to provide context, details, or tell your brand story. Basic formatting options are available.
• Video: The most dynamic component. Videos auto-play muted when they appear on screen. They are highly effective for capturing attention.
• Header: A useful element that docks to the top of the screen. You can upload your logo here to maintain brand presence as users scroll.
• Product Set: If you run an e-commerce brand with a catalog connected to Facebook, this component is amazing. It can dynamically pull in products from your catalog, creating a personalized shopping experience.

Click "Add Component" and begin arranging your storyboarded elements. Just drag and drop them to reorder the flow until it feels right. You can preview your work live on the right-hand side of the screen.

Step 6: Review, Save, and Publish!

Once you’re happy with your design, click "Save" and then "Finish." Be careful: once you click "Finish," you can't go back and edit that specific Instant Experience. You can, however, duplicate it to make changes.

Finally, send a preview notification to your own phone from Ads Manager. Test it in a real-world environment before publishing your campaign to the world. Make sure all buttons link correctly and the entire experience flows smoothly.

Best Practices for a High-Performing Instant Experience

• Lead with Motion: Always start with a video if you have one. It's the best way to stop the scroll and immediately grab attention.
• Think Vertically: This is a mobile-first format. All your creative assets should be shot or edited for a vertical (9:16) aspect ratio.
• Keep Text Concise: Users are scrolling and skimming. Use compelling headlines and short, punchy paragraphs. Break up large walls of text.
• Use Consistent Branding: Make sure colors, fonts (where possible), and messaging align with your brand's overall identity.
• Combine Media Types: The most engaging experiences mix different components. Follow a video with a photo, then a text block, then a carousel. Variety keeps it interesting.
• Tell One Story: Don't try to cram too many messages into a single ad. Stick to the one primary goal you defined in your planning stage and ensure every component serves that goal.

Final Thoughts

Facebook's Instant Experiences empower you to create mobile landing pages that are as beautiful as they are fast. By moving beyond a simple image or video ad, you can tell richer stories, show off more products, and create a far more memorable and effective user experience that keeps potential customers inside the app you brought them in with.

Executing compelling formats like Instant Experiences is an important piece of a modern social media strategy, but organizing a full content calendar across all your platforms can feel draining. At Postbase, we focused on building a clean, visual calendar that lets you see your entire strategy - from TikToks to Instagram Stories to creative ads - all in one place. It helps you schedule your content reliably and spot gaps without having to constantly switch between spreadsheets and apps.