Canva & Meta Plot a Course For a New Era of Advertising
Digital design platform Canva and social media giant Meta have joined forces to address the growing challenge of creating effective short-form video advertisements.
In a recent webinar, executives from the two companies shared their thoughts on how brands should be building creative strategies for an increasingly competitive digital landscape where attention spans continue to shrink.
Erin Harlan from Canva's B2B Product Marketing team and Cecilia LV, Strategic Partnerships Lead at Meta, outlined how creative content has become central to advertising performance.
According to Cecilia, creative quality now accounts for roughly half of all campaign outcomes, a figure that has remained consistent since 2017.
However, the methods for capturing audience attention has undoubtedly evolved in that time.
In 2025, short-form video content is a huge focus for marketing teams across the world, whether it's TikTok, YouTube, Instagram or Facebook. When delivering that kind of ad campaign, companies are having to consider how to appeal to audiences in a whole new way.
"It's not enough to just show up – you have to stand out," Cecilia says during the webinar.
In their discussion, the teams from Canva and Meta both explained that advertising with Instagram Reels can deliver 24% higher brand lift compared to other formats and influence over 60% of viewers to consider a brand or product — a clear indicator that the advertising is changing.
Creating a formula for success
The webinar outlined three fundamental tactics for creating effective Instagram Reels:
- Designing for full-vertical viewing
- Incorporating sound or music
- Maintaining content within the so-called "safe zone" (the centre of the phone screen) to prevent user interface elements from obscuring key messages
These practices can drive up to 100% higher delivery rates, achieve 34% lower cost per conversion than image advertisements and reduce cost-per-click by 15% compared to non-optimised video content.
Meta recommended using established content formats, described as "story types", which include listicles highlighting product benefits and photo compilations that transform static images into dynamic narratives.
These formats offer scalability and can be adapted across multiple campaigns whilst maintaining effectiveness.
Streamlining creativity
Meta and Canva have been collaborating for some time and it's a mutually beneficial partnership that makes perfect sense.
With its huge presence in the social media market, Meta owns one of the world's largest portfolios of advertising real estate.
As for Canva — the Australian company is challenging Adobe in the creative design sector and is favoured by millions of professional and casual users alike for creating eye-catching graphics, marketing materials and advertising.
This collaboration is helping to give creative teams practical solutions, including Reels templates based on proven story types now available within Canva's platform.
These templates aim to make performance-optimised creative accessible to teams regardless of their design experience.
The companies also introduced the Meta Design Check app, now available in Canva's Apps Marketplace.
This tool provides immediate feedback on whether creative content meets Meta's best practices and includes visual previews showing how advertisements will appear in Reels or Stories placements.
"It gives you instant feedback on how to improve your design — and we just launched a new feature that gives you visual feedback on safe zone," Cecilia explains.
Making advertising easy
Canva Enterprise features were showcased as solutions for teams managing high-volume creative production.
The platform offers drag-and-drop video editing, brand kits, AI-generated captions, highlight trimming and real-time collaboration tools designed to help marketing teams produce content efficiently.
Teams can integrate Meta's feedback directly into their workflow, creating a more seamless path from initial draft to live advertisement.
"With built-in approvals, real-time collaboration and integrations with tools like Meta, you can streamline production and deliver excellent content while keeping your design team focused on key projects," says Erin.
Industry implications
The partnership reflects broader industry trends as brands grapple with the dominance of short-form video content across social platforms.
With TikTok and Instagram Reels fundamentally changing how audiences consume media, traditional advertising approaches require significant adaptation.
The tools and strategies outlined by Canva and Meta suggest that successful video advertising increasingly depends on understanding platform-specific requirements rather than simply repurposing existing creative assets.
For marketing teams, this represents both an opportunity to reach engaged audiences and a challenge to develop new capabilities in an evolving landscape.
