Facebook Declunks Ads Manager & Streamlines Business Manager 

Facebook has announced a series of changes for Ads Manager, with the rollout of a design refresh and improved navigation.

The changes form part of a wider update to Business Manager, which is being reworked in 2019. According to Facebook:

‘As digital advertising becomes more complex, we want to make our tools easier to use to help businesses of all sizes succeed. That's why today, we're sharing plans to update our core business tools, Ads Manager and Business Manager.

Throughout the year, we'll be making updates to help businesses quickly create, manage and analyse ad campaigns.’

The update also incorporates a new ad bidding strategy for advertisers.

To date, Facebook ad bidding strategies have either focused on maximising conversion volume (bid cap) or cost predictability (target cost).

The newly introduced ‘cost cap’ bidding strategy maximises both cost-efficiency and results.

Cost cap maximises cost efficiency by getting you the most results, such as purchases or installs, at or below your set maximum cost per optimization event.

News Ads Manager New You?

In 2019 if you are running Facebook or Instagram ads, you probably need to be using Ads Manager.

There are obviously exceptions to the rule, but for the lion’s share of the 7 million advertisers on the platform, this rings true.   

The updates to Ads Manager will be rolling out through 2019/202 to advertisers worldwide. New features include:

• New navigation bar, providing more space to manage ads and highlight tools that offer more insight into ad performance and reporting
• New campaign creation experience with a copy and paste functionality that will offer more flexibility when building ads
• An auto-naming feature that will make it faster for businesses to customise their campaign, ad set and ad names
• More intuitive ad-level creative and placement editing tools

SMK generally recommends running all paid activities on Facebook or Instagram via Business Manager.

Large agencies, or in-house client media agencies, will sometimes use expensive enterprise adtech solutions. However, in many cases the jury is still out on how worthwhile this is for Facebook and Instagram, considering:

1. The glut of middle-men who nibble away at media spend in the supply chain, with commissions and hidden fees
2. Are the results that much better than native campaigns to justify the expenses above
3. Often with a chunky piece of adtech in the middle agencies miss new native features which have not yet been added to their platform API

Business Manager Changes Making Scalability Easier

Speaking of agencies, one of the biggest challenges for agencies and clients alike is structuring ad accounts and profiles, and syncing into Business Manager.

Since day one this has been a convoluted and confusing process, and thankfully Facebook is finally looking to address in 2019.

Later this year, Facebook is updating Business Manager to make it faster and easier for agencies to activate their clients' campaigns.

These changes will include:

• An easier process for agencies to onboard new clients
• A better way for agencies to manage clients’ historical reporting
• An easier way to assign and organise assets to people within your Business Manager account

Since many these updates are quite substantial structural changes, many will be rolled out in dribs and drabs, so keep your eyes peeled in the coming weeks and months.