Facebook has made a new tool available to handle your Facebook ad campaigns and there are some important changes you need to know about. The major change is the addition of a new level in the ad campaign structure to provide more granular metrics including unique statistics across all ads within a campaign.
Important Dates
- March 4, 2014 - Facebook’s new campaign tool becomes available for those with access to Ads Create Tool, Ads Manager and Power Editor
- July 2, 2014 - Developers must implement the new campaign structure and external object names by this date
IMPORTANT:
To Access the API for your test accounts you must complete a whitelist for each test account. Your marketing application must have the new API installed and ready to go to use the new Facebook Ad Structure.
Important Changes
Facebook is creating a new ad campaign structure to help your Facebook ads be more successful and deliver more meaningful metrics. This new structure has been created with future expansion and changes in mind for Facebook Ads so you will want to get your marketing software APIs changed now in order to remain compatible with the new functionality.
Naming Conventions: The New Structure Adds a New Level of Hierarchy
- The old “Ad Campaigns” will become “Ad Sets”
- The new “Ad Campaigns” will be assigned “Ad Sets”
- Public field names may no longer match the API endpoint name
For example:
| Old Public Name | New Public Name | API Endpoint Name |
| (none) | Campaign | /adcampaign_groups |
| Campaign | Ad Set | /adcampaigns |
| Ad | Ad | /adgroups |
Ads will make up ad sets which will be assigned to ad campaigns. Facebook does not plan to support moving ad sets between campaigns or ads between sets. Presumably you are only allowed to add new ads to sets and new sets to campaigns. Nothing is said about having duplicate ads to use in different sets but the Facebook supposition is that most marketers will create fewer campaigns and more ad sets per campaign.
New Functionality
- A campaign can be made up of multiple ad sets
- An ad set can contain multiple ads
- Campaigns can be paused and resumed
- Campaigns can have specific objectives limiting the types of ads that can be placed in the campaign
- Spend caps will be available for campaigns
Migrations
Your current (old) Facebook Ad Campaigns will be migrated to the new structure and newly created campaigns must take the new structure into account as you design and implement them.
Ad Campaign Migration
Ad campaign required fields:
- name
- campaign_group_status
- objective (optional)
An objective is intended to validate that ads created within the campaign are targeted towards the same goal and to prevent errors in campaign set-up.
Ad Set Migration
Ad Sets contain the same functionality as the old Ad Campaigns except:
- A campaign group object to aggregate ad sets
- Addition of a campaign_group_id field (specifies which ad campaign the ad set belongs to)
- Renaming ad set name to “Ad Set 1” with the replacement of the original name with the new ad campaign’s name
Note that Facebook has already created ad campaigns for each of your existing ad sets in a 1:1 mapping. In this case the campaign_group_id field of the ad cannot be changed. You will not be able to change the campaign an ad set belongs to for these. However, you can place new ad sets into existing campaigns.
Ad Migration
The ad group retains all functionality except for the addition of objective to validate the ad against the creative, the ad set-up, and that the ad is correctly targeted for the campaign.
Test Accounts
Whenever a new version of any application is implemented you will want to make sure it is doing what it’s supposed to. The first thing you want to do is test out the new features and capabilities on your test account. If you already have a test account, make sure it is whitelisted with Facebook.
If you do not have a test ad account, you can create one by emailing newcampaignstrucutre@fb.com and include the email login, time zone and currency. Facebook does not recommend creating multiple test applications but does encourage configuring the test platform with the exact features you intend to use and to play with all the new features such as pausing and resuming a campaign.
Final Words…
Dealing with PPC platforms and campaigns can be nerve-wracking to the marketer who is new to it all. Facebook is doing a creditable job at simplifying the process from their end and giving you solid metrics to boot. With the addition of objectives the system will help keep you on track to your goals by verifying that each ad in the set and campaign is targeted in the same direction.
But none of these new tools will help you if you don’t implement them and make sure the API is properly synced to your marketing application. Facebook has given you a hard deadline of July 2, 2014 and the platform is available now. If you haven’t started to make changes, now is the time.
