Facebook™ is by far the social media platform with the strongest focus on advertising and marketing. It was the first one to introduce paid reach and ads. It created the Pixel – the code allowing marketers to track visitors to their website and target them with Facebook™ ads. And it created one of the easiest to use platforms for creating, targeting and tracking the performance of social media ads.
This year, the Facebook™ developers’ team continued to tweak and improve the Ads Manager platform, in order to help business owners and marketers create better ads with less effort. At the same time, these updates are influenced by the changes in the way people interact with businesses on the social media and the devices they use to log in to the platform.
These are the most important changes to the way the Facebook™ Ads Manager looks and works made in 2017, and which you should become familiar with:
- Power Editor and Ads Manager Are Now the Same Platform
In an effort to make things simpler and easier for marketers, the Facebook™ team has brought together Ads Manager and Power Editor. The key changes which you will note when you open the ads creation platform are:
- Two ways of creating ads: Quick – when you know exactly what you need to do; Guided – for beginners;
- All campaign insights and data are in the same panel for more control on how you run your Facebook™ ad campaigns;
- Automated drafts: your ad drafts are saved automatically; you can leave Facebook™ and return to the Ad Manager later and continue working on them.
- Target Offline Customers
There is a new type of Custom Audience which you can create and use for targeting: the customers who buy in store or interact with you through offline means of communication (mail order, phone, etc.).
This change is in line with the latest omnichannel fulfilment strategy adopted by all brands. Online and offline marketing strategies are merged together in order to create a seamless and pleasant shopping experience for customers.
- Use Animated GIFs in Video Ads
Not all Facebook™ accounts have received this update yet, but it will probably be available for all pages before the end of the year. In the Ad Format section, you usually find the options: Carousel, Single Image, Single Video and Slideshow. For the Single Video option, a pop-up indicates that “You can now put animated GIFs in your video ads.”
If you see this pop-up, you are free to share with us the experience of trying out this feature.
- A New Ad Format: Lifestyle Template
Looking very similar to classic print catalogues, the lifestyle template is a more user friendly and interactive type of ad. It looks great both on computer and mobile, is highly interactive and carries the familiarity of Pinterest templates.
- Third Party Verification for Facebook™ Ads
Facebook™ has taken the brunt of click farm frauds. Marketers complained that their ad spending on the social media platform does not match the actual interactions on their website, although the insight showed a high click through rate for their ads.
In order to put a stop to frauds and extra spending caused by click farms, Facebook™ has partnered with DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science, reputable third party organisations which will verify if ads are clicked by a human or a bot.