Power Editor

While Power Editor has been around since before the time of the floatation, it is still surprisingly overlooked. Accessed from the link on the left hand side of Ad Manager, Power Editor enables you to copy and paste ads; make bulk changes to your campaigns; and gives you access to features that Facebook hasn’t yet released in the standard Ad Manager interface. Power Editor isn’t without its faults. Usability and clunky controls are the main sticking points; however, it is an invaluable tool if you are managing more than a couple of ad copies at a time.

Custom Audiences

Accessed through the Power Editor, Custom Audiences enable advertisers to utilize their customer database in Facebook. Provided the members of your database are associated with a Facebook account, a simple file upload containing either the Facebook User IDs, email addresses, or phone numbers of your members enables you to target existing prospects and customers with ads on Facebook. There are a number of ways that this strategy can be utilized and its effectiveness depends on how well segmented your customer database is. For instance, you could target users of a free service with ads promoting upgrades to a paid service, or use it as a remarketing tool for users who are already prospective sales leads but have not yet converted.




Lookalike Audiences

Once you have created your custom audience lists, or saved an existing target audience, Facebook lets you create new target audiences based on the makeup of your current lists. A list of profiles that closely match your current audience members is generated using information on users’ Likes and interests that Facebook holds within their database. This allows you to optimize your campaigns by expanding the reach of the ads to new users who are likely to have similar characteristics to your current audience.

Conversion Tracking

Facebook launched conversion tracking in the early part of 2013, which enables advertisers to track offsite conversions through the use of a tracking pixel in much the same way as they do through Google AdWords. Keep in mind when reviewing ad reports that Likes and other Facebook-specific actions do not count as conversions in the reporting interface; however, conversions will show up in the actions column of your reports.

Retargeting ads

Facebook offers retargeting through the Facebook Ad Exchange (FBX). Access to the FBX is only available through a select number of third party ad exchanges and is not available as a self-serve option in the Facebook ads platform. After installing retargeting pixels on the parts of your website where visitors you would like to retarget are visiting (for instance users who have visited your site but have left before purchasing) you can then retarget these users through Facebook ads.

New features will continue to be added to Facebook as the site continues to evolve its ad platform, and some of the above features will become more well-known.  Until then, it’s worth gaining a competitive advantage by capitalizing on their relative underuse.


About the Author
Daniel Mew is a Performance Media Strategist at Mediative, with responsibilities including developing client’s digital marketing strategies across major PPC networks, analyzing account performance, and implementing recommendations. Daniel is continually searching for new developments that will enable clients to gain a competitive advantage and maximise the return on investment of their digital marketing campaigns. Originally hailing from the UK, where he graduated from Swansea University with an MSc. in Business Management, Daniel moved to Canada in 2010 where he has worked in digital marketing for clients of all sizes across a wide range of industries.