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HUGE UPDATE: The Facebook Power Editor & Ads Manager Merge Into One And How This Affects You.

Devin Zander 6 years and 6 months ago
HUGE UPDATE: The Facebook Power Editor & Ads Manager Merge Into One And How This Affects You.
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The New Face of Ads Manager.

Advertisers were given a great gift by Facebook on September 12th –the merging of Power Editor and Ads Manager into a single offering. The result? A much more user-friendly experience. Power Editor has been laid to rest.

Facebook announced,

“We’re always looking for ways to make advertising on Facebook easier for businesses, which is why we’re combining the robust ad creation and editing features of Power Editor with the ease of use and familiarity advertisers love in Ads Manager, all in one tool.”

For some time now, Ad Manager and Power Editor started to mirror each other. With each new update, they begun to look like the same offering and merging them seemed like the most obvious next step. And here we are with a new Ads Manager interface. When you log in, you will notice that the updated UI operates in very much the same way as it did only with some of the best features from Power Editor embedded into it.

Little Big Changes.

One of the most noticeable changes includes the ability to create and save your ad drafts without publishing. We can give a collective sigh of relief that we will no longer leave Ads Manager and accidentally lose all of our work because we failed to push save. Facebook will immediately prompt you to save your efforts or to publish. This automatic draft feature was one of Power Editors most popular features where your work was automatically saved on Facebook’s server, and it now comes to Ads Manager as a major factor in the upgrade.

You can also say goodbye to jumping between the two different interfaces because Power Editor’s comprehensive charts and activity history are now accessible on Ads Manager.

Choosing Your Preferred Workflow.

The new design feels familiar and has the best of both worlds. Those users who were more inclined to use Power Editor’s quick creation are still able to use this workflow in Ads Manager. Those who enjoyed the ease of Ad Manager’s guided creation can opt to use that option. You can also choose to change your preferred workflow at any time. Simply use the relevant button on the top right of the ad creation window.

In the past, users found their way to one of the interfaces and stuck with it, mastering the features of their choice. But you could have been missing out on some of the great opportunities the other option offered. This coming together of two incredible forces makes for a superpower to maximize the impact of your Facebook advertising efforts.

The Old Face of Ads Manager & Power Editor.

Ads Manager brought you the Guided Creation tool where you could:

  • Create your ads and run them
  • Use targeting to put your ad in front of the right audience
  • Set your budget
  • Analyze your ads efficacy
  • See your billing summary

For first-time users of the platform, this option was a hand holding experience to make the process easier for first time digital marketers. For those who no longer needed the training wheels, they gravitated towards Power Editor where you could:

  • Enable bulk action and scalability
  • Streamline processes like creation and duplication
  • Review process that required approval before publishing
  • Clone any ads
  • Adjust multiple assets without a tutorial

Now you get the best of both these options. The new combo has seen an evolution in the areas of campaign creation and reporting areas.

Creation Flows Update:

As we mentioned before, “Guided Creation” was the hallmark of the Ads Manager, offering an upgrade over the last year. When designing campaigns, advertisers would get assistance every step of the way as they created a campaign, ad set, and ad.

Advertisers using Power Editor could choose between Guided Creation or the Quick Creation options. The latter allowed for super fast generating of the campaign, ad set, and ad draft.

These two change in the following way…

In the upgraded Ads Manager, combined tool Power Editor users can still access Quick Creation and continue to use the solution they have come to know and love.

No matter what your preference, Ads Manager lets you stay comfortable using your favorite solution. The great thing is that Facebook will automatically opt you into the method you most often used when creating your ads to date. But you will be able to switch to the other mode at any point. You can switch back and forth to your heart’s content.

Changes to Drafts.

It might seem like a small button addition, but it is going to make a world of difference when generating your next campaign –the “Save to Draft” button. In the old Ads Manager, if you closed the window you could say goodbye to all of your hard work –it would be gone for good, and you would have to start from scratch. The new button in the left corner lets you save your work as a draft, and you don’t have to tear your hair out if you accidentally close the window.

The saving of drafts is also automatic on Facebook. Just like in the old Power Editor (Yes, it’s already an ‘old’ option) you will still need to review and then publish any changes you need to make to go “live.” If you have any unsaved changes, Facebook will nudge you to get in the game and review and publish.

One Source for All Reports.

In the past, there was a lot of confusion around how to access your ad metrics using both platforms. You could have your ad reports in Ad Manager, but then you also had other stats in Power Editor, and sometimes the reports didn’t line up. For new advertisers, it seemed impossible to navigate or understand. Many people chose to get their information using Ads Manager’s Customized Columns and found what they were looking for within Breakdowns.

This fog of confusion has cleared by having one centralized place to find your ad reports. You will be able to get charts, activity history, breakdowns, summary rows, date benchmarks, exported insights reports, etc., from one source. No more back and forth.

Embracing Change.

We are all wary of change and want to cling onto the way we have always done things. For the digital marketer, making their first foray into Facebook advertising might have been completely intimidated by Power Editor, and gravitated to Ads Manager. The experienced advertiser wanted to be able to use all of the extras that Power Editor afforded them. But no-one loses in this new, upgrade Ads Manager nirvana. You can still use “Guided Creation” if you are a novice, and for the experienced user, you can still access all of the bells and whistles that came with Power Editor. Win-win! Nothing is lost, all is gained.

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