4 TOOLS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT IN FACEBOOK ADS MANAGER


If you build Facebook ads, you’ve likely noticed some BIG changes in Ads Manager in the past months.

While most of these changes are cosmetic, it can still be a bit difficult to navigate the new environment if you are not overly familiar with it. However, Facebook has invested some serious time in making Ads Manager more user friendly – and for that we should be thankful.

This article will help you find the most useful tools inside Facebook Ads Manager and explain a little bit about how and why you would want to use each of them from a higher level.

When you log into Facebook Ads Manager it’s going to look something like this:
Facebook Ads Manager

A Quick overview of this page:
The menu that used to be along the left sidebar has moved to the top. Use these options to navigate to other areas within Ads Manager or the Facebook Ads Platform. Under the Tools drop down are some important tools we will touch on later.
Below the main menu is a drop down that will display all of your saved reports – one of the great new features that we will touch on.
If you are an admin on multiple accounts, the next drop down will allow you to easily navigate between all of your ad accounts.
Main Nav

Next down the page is a graph showing your daily spend over the last 7 days, with the total to the right. It’s a good idea to keep an eye on this and make sure nothing appears out of the ordinary.

Daily Spend

And finally, below the daily spend is your campaign views. This is one of the biggest, and most welcome changes to ads manager. The main viewing area of Ads Manager now houses all of the important data you need to analyze and improve your campaigns.

You will by default be viewing all of your account’s campaigns, including those that are inactive. Active campaigns will be shown at the top of this list. You can easily switch between Campaigns, Ad Sets or Ad Views from this dropdown menu.

Campaign list

From this main view we will be able to access the four features we think are most important for improving your Facebook Ad campaign results. Let’s jump in and get dirty.

1 Analyzing the Performance of your Campaigns

From the Ads Manager main view you now have access to each of your campaigns – this information used to be housed in a menu item hidden on the left side under “Reports”. Now with one click you can jump into any campaign and begin to analyze its performance.

Clicking on one of your campaigns will change your view substantially to something similar to this.

Campaign Drill Down View

The data from your campaign is represented visually across the top. You can easily change the graphs that are displayed depending on which metrics you wish to focus on. The default view is based on your campaign objective, but you can change the graphs along the left side to show you details on the number of “People Reached” or your “Amount Spent”.

Clicking on “Custom” will allow you to compare two different campaign stats. Each of these drop downs has the same options allowing you to cross reference data. Depending on your campaign objective, the top two options will vary, but these are the options when you choose the Post Engagements objective.

Performace:Customize

The default view of this screen is always set to Performance, but you can change this to either “Audience” or “Placement” to gain greater insight on who is interacting with your ads and on which devices.

Each of these graphs have their own drop down menus which you can adjust the data based on your preference.

Audience View

Placement View

2 Creating Custom Reports and Saved Reports

As mentioned, you now have an easier time accessing your Campaign, Ad set, and individual Ad’s data. In nearly every view of the new Ads Manager, you are able to see detailed reports of exactly how your campaigns are performing.

By default, you will always be viewing the ‘Performance” data, but you can easily customize these reports. Customizing these reports to fit your particular goals can save you A TON of time as you look to become more efficient with your ads.

Columns Default

Based on which metrics are important to you and your business, you can adjust the reports to show you valuable information.

Want to know which ads are creating the most likes, comments, shares? Use the Engagement Report.
Want to know the reach, frequency and cost per impression of your ads? Use the Delivery Report.
One of the more important reports that really helps you determine the strength of your campaigns is the “Performance and Clicks” report. This will give you insight into a number of different metrics based on your campaign objective.
To customize any column view you first select “Customize Columns” from the columns drop down. This feature was previously accessed via the “Custom Ad Reports” option, but is far easier to find now.

Customize Columns

Within this view you are provided with a plethora of options to create the report that makes the most sense for your business and your objectives.

Customize Columns Options

On the right side is “Columns Selected” which will display all of the columns currently in your report. To remove a column from the report, click the X next to it.

The list along the left will allow you to view all the column options available to you to include in your custom report. If you are looking for a specific metric, you can search for it across the top of the page.

Once you’re happy with your report, you can:

Save It…

Save custom

Name it…

Save

And access it at any time…

Access

You also have the option to make your new report the default from the same menu.

3 Access and Building Custom & Saved Audiences

The next two important features of Facebook Ads Manager are found under the Tools drop down in the main menu.

Facebook Ads Manager – Tools

Click on “Audiences” to create and save new audiences to use in your advertising campaign targeting. There are three different Audiences that you can create. Within these options there are a few audience types that we will focus on today.

Three Audience Types

Custom Audience: Customer List
You have the ability to upload a file of your contacts into Facebook and match the emails and phone numbers in your database up with Facebook users then target this list with ads.

Upload a file

Custom Audience: Website Traffic
You can also create a list of people who visit your website or view specific web pages by applying a tracking pixel.

To do so, copy the code from Facebook and place it between the tags on your website. This will add all of the visitors to your website into a custom audience so you can remarket to them.

Name your audience and tell Facebook how long you want to keep visitors in this audience. The longest you can keep a website visitor in this type of audience is 180 days – so it’s a good idea to keep targeting them and keep them returning to your website.

Create Audience

Saved Target Groups
With the last type of audience you can save your commonly targeted audiences so that you can quickly reuse them for multiple campaigns.

This dialog functions exactly how Ad Set targeting does. Choose your audiences, demographics, interests and behaviors, then save them to reuse in future ads. Once you have chosen your targeting options, click “Create Audience” and you’ll have access to this audience at any time.

Create Saved Target Group

The next time you want to pull up this saved target group, select your new saved audience from the list and wa-la! The targeting options will be moved into your ad set.

Saved Audiences

4 Accessing and Reviewing your Pixels

And lastly, our 4th tool, the “Pixels” page found within the “Tools” menu.

Tools Pixels

Selecting this tool will bring you to a page that displays reports on your Custom Audience Pixels. You can view your pixel activity by domain, specific URLs, devices or events. These options are sortable near the bottom of the page.

Custom Audience Pixels

The default view of the page is for “Custom Audience Pixel” reports. If you click on “Conversion Tracking Pixel” you will be taken to the old page which contains all the information on your conversion tracking pixels for your ad account.

The final, useful tool on this page is under the “Actions” menu. Here you have to option to edit the pixel details, view the pixel code, email the pixel, or in the case of Business Manager accounts you have the option to Share the pixel with other ad accounts.

Actions Pixels

As you can see…
There are A TON of options for reporting and different tools at your fingertips in the new, revamped ads manager. This article only brushes on a few techniques and it’s always advisable to stay updated with the changes to the Facebook ads platform.
What do you think? Have you used the new Ads Manager? Do you find it confusing or do you really enjoy the new layout? We’d love to hear from you.