Recently, Facebook has announced that it will remove 17 of its advertising formats. A List of affected by ‘downsizing’ ad types included:

• Boosting share of products from shops
• Page sharing a shop, then boosting the story
• Boosting a check-in on a map, at a restaurant, or in a city
• Boosting the share of a note
• Boosting the share of a poll
• Boosting place recommendations
• Boosting the share of cultural moments
• Boosting the share of comments
• Boosting change of a Profile picture
• Boosting a file upload or share
• Boosting a sports event
• Boosting of a video or image uploaded through the Facebook camera
• Boosting a post related to attending an event
• Boosting the share of a video playlist
• Boosting the status of watching a television show, movie, or other types of programming
• Sharing an already sponsored post that is an app posting to a Page’s timeline, then boosting that story
• Boosting a political endorsement

The announced changes are promised to be implemented on the 15 of September 2017. One of the reasons is that these formats became either extremely ineffective towards advertiser’s goals or barely used.

In order to maximize the viewings and engagement rates from daily posted ads, it is very important not to waste the ad consumer attention with infrequently used formats.

Before the 15, any post created on Facebook could become an advertisement, after the changes Facebook aims to keep the main focus on 5 types of posts:

• photo and message;
• carousel with multiple images or videos in one ad;
• video and message;
• slideshow
• canvas

Source

Perhaps new ad formats are coming?