Facebook Radically Simplifies Ad Buying
By Lauren Indvik 2013-10-08 17:00:54 UTC
Facebook ad buyers have cause to celebrate: On Tuesday, the social network unveiled a major overhaul of both its basic ad-buying platform, Ads Manager, and its more sophisticated offering, Power Editor, both of which now boast a more streamlined interface.
Those who have used Ads Manager and Power Editor in the past know that neither tool is the simplest or most logically designed. Previously, ad buyers were asked to choose from a range of ad options and then select their campaign objectives and optimization methods.
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Now, more reasonably, advertisers are first asked to identify their objectives. That could be a sales conversion on a website, for example, or an increase in mobile app downloads. Other objectives include increasing total page Likes, increasing engagement with particular posts or a Facebook app, boosting in-store Offer claims and upping RSVPs to a Facebook event.
Once an objective has been identified, Facebook guides advertisers to the most appropriate ad. It's up to the advertiser to choose where that ad appears — in the News Feed, for example, or alongside it.
In addition to the new ad-buying interface, users can also now upload multiple images for a single campaign, allowing five different ads to run at once. In the analytics dashboard — also part of the overhaul — they'll be able to quickly assess which images are performing best. They can also easily sort all of their campaigns to see which delivers the best conversion value.
Although their interfaces are the same, the Power Editor will continue to offer additional functionality to ad buyers. In addition to the new streamlined buying process, Power Editor users can also manually select their ads.
"Ad managers know how to buy ads already; we don't want to make ad changes forced," David Baser, product manager at Facebook, said.
Images: iStock, hh5800 and Facebook
Topics: Advertising, Business, Facebook