Up Close & Personal With Facebook’s Ad Manager App

The company does what it can to make life easier for advertisers. This year it delivered Facebook Ads Manager as a mobile application for iOS and Android.

While mobile browsers were able to access some functions of the ad manager since last year, the jump to an app has brought some changes.

Edit And Create Ads

The main function previously accessible via mobile browser is back for the app. Those of you already familiar with starting Facebook campaigns should find this relatively familiar. Start by selecting an objective, such as Clicks to Website, Page Post Engagements, or App Installs.

I'll add a quick plug for the Video Views objective. Facebook has quietly become one of the best mediums for video content, and using Video Views as a campaign goal is an amazing way to get your content marketing program off the ground.

It's also worth noting that the Page Likes metric hasn't made it in. Language on Facebook's support page suggests that this may change in the future, but for now, you'll have to use the Pages Manager app, or a desktop to access the objective.

After picking an objective you'll have a chance to complete your ad and specify audience. Again, there's not much on the app that desktop users couldn't access before - apart from some nice sliders for metrics such as preferred audience age - but the demographic engine is as powerful as its ever been, and I'm pleased to see it made the jump to app form without losing usability.

Finally, set budget and schedule, and you're ready to let your ad loose on the world.

They're relatively easy to edit post-launch as well. Editing is available under the "Campaigns" tab, and lets you tinker with image, audience, budget, and scheduling.

While you're not going to find anything particularly groundbreaking in this section of the app, there are a couple value points worth mentioning.

• You can now set up campaigns on the go. Convenient, and it also gives you access to images on your mobile devices - coupled with the easy-use format of the app, and you've got a great way to launch ads quick.
• That's handy, but what I really like is the editing function. Spot-fixing typos and zeroing in on your audience are mission-critical edits, and the ability to make them on the fly is enormous. Also, the value of the interface absolutely shines for busy workers. Thumb-tapped buttons and sliders make the process of setting up and launching ads much, much quicker and easier.

Metrics

Ad tracking is also now available on mobile and, like the campaign creation manager, should be relatively familiar to veteran Facebook marketers. It's possible to dig into how large an ad's audience is, who it includes, and how the ad affected them, all accompanied by handy graphs.

I'm divided on this particular function. It takes some time to get used to seeing those numbers in such a cramped format (if you're using an iPhone), but there are some pretty incredible benefits. Paired with the editing functionality, and you have everything you need to determine what ads need fixing, then make the fixes very quickly.

More ambitious advertisers could even dabble in A/B testing. Send two or more differing ads out, camp on the results page to see how they perform, then axe or edit the less productive option. It's something that's always been possible, but the mobile app adds a whole new dimension of speed and flexibility to the equation. The Ad Set organizational tiers make this even more viable by allowing you to group several ads together for quick access.

Notifications

Here's the only truly new feature brought by the app, and it's one that, on balance, offers a lot of value to users.

Notifications come in a few forms. Some will offer quick information on your ad's performance, either giving you an objective count, or a comparison against similar ad sets. I'm divided on this particular subtype - it seems more gimmicky than actionable (particularly the comparisons), but could potentially alert you to unexpected high or low performance.

Much more useful are the practical alerts. These will give you a quick nudge if your ad is wrapping up, or if you're about to hit your spending limit. Also handy: they'll alert you if an ad has been disapproved, which is deceptively vital. Fail to notice that one of your campaigns has been turned down, and it can sit in limbo until the next time you check in on it. Notifications ensure that you know the moment problems crop up.

Bottom Line

There's more you can do with the app, but those are my main takeaways to this point. Overall, I'm very excited to have the app, and I'm looking forward to learning even more of its ins and outs. For now, it looks as though it'll fill a firefighting niche for my ads, making it much easier to tackle emerging problems before they spiral into something larger.

But that is, I'm sure, just the tip of the iceberg. Take my suggestions, run with them, and tell me what works for you. Good luck!

Now Read

• Using Facebook Custom Audiences to Re-Engage Existing or Potential Customers
• How to Create High-Converting Facebook Ads Campaigns " Case Studies
• All About Facebook Ads [INFOGRAPHIC]

^{* Leader image adapted from f-l-e-x}