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We mentioned a handful of key Facebook Advertising features in a previous article, but not in a lot of detail. In this post, we’ll go in depth through some very useful tools for Facebook Ads that not a lot of people know about.
Third-Party Tag Integration
If you experienced setting up the Facebook pixel prior to 2017, then you’ll remember taking several steps to get that done. This was especially true of setting up shopping carts and event tracking. In 2017, that changed when Facebook simplified the process. They implemented an integration tool that you can access in the Business Manager.
Now, you can get started by simply entering the Events Manager and locating the “Connect Data Sources” tool. Within this tool’s settings, you will find options for connecting data sources as well as the ability to edit created connections and add custom conversions. First, you will need to decide what type of data source it is that you want to connect. Note that if you have an existing conversion pixel, you will not be able to select the Web option. At this stage, you will be fed step by step instructions once you click on the “Get Started” button.
Audience Insights
This is the “getting-to-know-you” Facebook tool. This gives businesses an opportunity to gain valuable insight into their customers’ behavior and build a custom target audience.
The aggregate anonymous information that this tool collects about your audience includes:
- Demographic information like their age, gender, education level, relationship status, work, and the kind of lifestyle they have
- Their interests as well as their liked ages, categories of those Pages, and Pages that are relevant to them or that they are especially likely to enjoy compared to the general Facebook audience
- Where they live and what language they speak
- How often they log in and what devices they use to log in
- If they prefer in-store shopping or online shopping
- Other purchase activity like product categories they’ve bought in the past
You can see this information for general Facebook audiences, people already connected to your page, or a Custom Audience that you have already built.
Facebook Ad Features
Location Targeting
This feature is useful if you have a physical store and want to target customers in your area. You can apply location targeting at the ad set level and you can even set a targeted mile/km radius or only target a specific city. Additionally you also have 4 options to target the people within the selected location:
- People who live in this location.
- People whose recent location is within this area.
- Targeting all people described in 1. And 2.
- People who do not live in this area (more than 200 km or 125 miles away) but whose most recent location is within this specified area
Depending on your business, it can be important to distinguish visitors from residents.
Depending on your business, it can be important to distinguish visitors from residents.
Block Lists & Publisher Lists
Facebook’s Publisher List is a collection of URLs or places where your ads can appear. These include placement types like the Audience Network (connected AppStore or Play store applications), in-stream videos, Instant Articles, banner ads, native ads, rewarded videos and interstitial ads.
When you select a particular placement type, you can see which publishers are available for that type. You can also search for publishers by name, filter them, and sort them into lists.
There are 2 lists you can choose to make based on the data in the Publisher List:
- Block Lists – If you don’t want your ads to show up on certain publishers, you can “blacklist: them by adding those URLs to this list. When creating a Block List, they also show you how to create a block list file. Once finalized, you can apply these lists to multiple ad accounts.
- Publisher Allow Lists – This is essentially the “whitelisting” option. You can add publishers to this list and your ads will only show up on URLs that you have added. Make sure these lists aren’t too short as their length can affect ad delivery, campaign budget spending, and ad cost.
Note: The Publisher List is always growing, so make sure to check on it regularly and make updates to your own lists as needed. Facebook recommends a monthly review. You can examine these lists per individual placement or for all of them.
Publisher Delivery Reports show you impression data and where exactly your ads were placed. You can review the performance of each ad per placement. This data only shows a 30-day review, so we recommend checking on it on a monthly basis as well.
You can view the Publisher Lists, create block lists, and view Delivery Reports via the navigation menu under Brand Safety. As a white label social media marketing team, we can help get this set up for you clients.
Automated Rules
Ad campaigns have a lot of moving parts, so making constant adjustments is to be expected. It can get quite taxing if you have to manually adjust and tweak all the elements to perform the way you want them to. Enter automated rules. This time-saving solution takes the tedium out of managing a campaign without stealing away the reins.
Not only does this tool check all three ad levels (campaign, ad set, and ad) and sends notifications whenever something changes, but you can also set certain actions to be taken automatically whenever something specific happens. These rules can be applied on all levels whether active or paused.When you navigate to Automated Rules underneath the Advertise subsection in the navigation menu, you will be able to see a create rule button. Once you click it, you have the option to create a custom rule or select from three templates.
There are three main components involved in creating a custom automated rule:
- The campaign, ad set, or ad where it is applied
- The criteria for the rule to take place
- The action to be taken when set criteria are met
First, you want to name your rule and select which level (campaign, ad set, ad) you are applying automation to.
Second, in the action section, you can choose to turn the selected level on or off. You can also choose to set it to only send notifications. Under Action, you can also adjust your daily or lifetime budget, scale your budget, and adjust your manual bids.
Third, under Conditions, you can set one or multiple criteria that need to be met for a certain rule to activate. Next, you can determine a time range and schedule when these actions take place. Additionally, you can choose to receive email notification on top of your Meta notifications and you can add subscribers who can make changes to these rules. Lastly, Create your rule and you’re all set!
Final Thoughts
If any of the above sounds daunting to you, we have good news! You can hire us as your white label digital advertising company to take care of it all for you. We have all the expertise so you can optimize your socials without all the hassle. For more information, read about what white label means.
