Nothing sits still for long in the crazy-dynamic world of Facebook™ Advertising.
A new, user-friendly, time-saving option has arrived in the Facebook™ Ads Manager recently – the Facebook™ “Creative Optimiser”
The ever-evolving world of Facebook™ advertising keeps marketers on their toes. Frequently over the past ten years complexities and new layers of technically intense opportunities have been added to the Facebook™ advertising platform. To get the edge marketers have been continually returning to the strategy drawing-board, but in the last six months, it feels a lot like there has been a progressive dialling back on the complexity (or maybe I’m just getting used to the pace of the evolution).
I know for sure that when I was absent from the front line late 2015 for two or three months, the changes that took place in that short window were absolutely astounding. I resolved not to get detached again and to distill information into meaningful and understandable chunks that would be useful and actionable for advertisers who are not fully focused on any single advertising platform and who are busy running a business!
Without a doubt, Facebook™ is the most quickly evolving of the platforms, so it does take the most of my time. I love the twisting unfolding of the plan that is eventually shown in full. So – two of the most significant developments in the last short while on Facebook ad creation are:
- The Power Editor and the Ads Manager have been merged to one tool.
The Power Editor – feared by many advertisers due to its more involved and scary looking structure, enabled faster uploads of material and some functions that were not historically present in the Ads Manager. Personally, I had traded out of Power Editor about a year ago and preferred using the upgraded Ads Manager. What I see happening is that the Post Boost function is becoming what the Ad Manager used to be – improving Post Boosting options for users, but restricting some of the functionality that experienced platform users want and need. - The new ‘Facebook™ Dynamic Creative Optimising’ feature is presently in rollout across the globe.
The Creative Optimiser is a new ad creation tool enabling advertisers to upload marketing assets (ad copy and ad images) into the optimising tool following which Facebook assembles them into many ad variations – this image with that headline, that text and that link description and so on. A total of up to thirty different assets can be selected for one ‘ad’ (assets being the images, headlines, post text and link description). The ad variations are then put to the audience, rotating all changeouts in a spiraling sequence of optimsation until a winning combination is identified – which then takes the hero place in the campaign.Because it is generally accepted as best practice to mix up the assets in this way in the campaign creation stage, this is saving advertisers a lot of ad establishment time – if it proves effective. This new process essentially renders redundant some paid applications that have been delivering a similar service. Interesting times.Perhaps the most interesting thing about this new service is that ALL of the ad variations are considered to be one ad – and the result of each is able to be viewed in the Ad Report. I can’t wait to try it. I do not have this feature in my ad account yet, but when I do, I will be sharing the results and my thoughts on its effectiveness and time-saving in the Facebook Group From Zero to Digital Super Hero, where we chat about all things digital, use open case studies to help businesses increase their knowledge and confidence with digital advertising platforms. You are very welcome to join us there!
Facebook actually went down during the night of 11 October (night time here in NZ). Here in NZ we woke to a worldwide shock wave. We have become so reliant on the platform for communication with friends, customers and of course the advertising that we really need to consider how we would manage without it (or do we?!).
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