Some time ago I seized the opportunity of having a dedicated (yet mostly absent) Facebook Account Manager and prepared my ‘Facebook Ads Wish List’ – a fantasy list of how Facebook Ads could be (and should be).
I’d love to say that the Facebook Ads platform is so bad that they’re at risk of losing share. But, honeslty – to who? Each month our clients shift more and more budget away from AdWords to Facebook in search of low CPCs, high branding value and the opportunity to target tight demographics. Neither query- or demographic-based advertising will ruin the other – but I imagine the shift will continue.
It doesn’t seem unknown to Facebook either: their is ad platform is one of their least developed areas, with very few updates (that have any use, anyway) or innovation.
Below, however, are some thoughts on how the Facebook Ads platform could be great – should they feel the need to adapt and improve.
Profile Builder
We operate a dozen or so accounts – many in similar niches. Depending on objectives I’ll create 5-10 ads at any one time, mostly targeting similar demographics. While there’s capacity to duplicate ads (across campaigns, but not accounts), it’s just not practical.
A Profile Builder would be ideal. Imagine creating demographic profiles based on any terms you like, saving them to your ‘Profile Directory’ and then, in one click, creating new ads from these. You could select your 50-60 year old women in Sydney profile, your Cooking TV show profile, your food and dieting profile and be advertising in seconds – not tediously typing in as many words as you can think of.
Interest Sets
Maybe I’m being romantic if I think that Facebook has potential to extend their advertisers’ spend and ROI by extending each ads reach.
Surely that was their intention with the changes to the age targetting (you select 20-30 and they’ll show it to anyone they like who was once 20-30, or will be at some point – and apparently it’s better for you…)?
Instead, how about Interest Sets? You click ‘Oprah’ and you’ve instantly added 200 Oprah-related keywords. Sounds powerful. Come on Facebook: no brainer.
Interest Notifications
Facebook Ads typically fatigue in a few days, weeks or months; depending on how deep your pool is. If you created an ad some time ago that targeted every keyword related to ‘Oprah’, you might find that you can add another 20 or so now. Should we need to go back through every ad and see where markets have opened up?
Interest notifications would let you know when new pages or groups have been created, or new interest keywords have been added to the database. Kind of like the AdWords ‘Opportunities’ section. And no, I’m not talking about the 6 suggested interests that you see below an ad – that’s so useless and mis-targeted that it’s offensive.
Location Settings
Can we get some clarity here? Is geo-targeting done by IP or the location that users have entered? I’m assuming the former, but there is a lot of room for improvement here – and I don’t just mean adding my hometown.
Why not allow advertisers to target users based on both their current location and their stated location (or most regular login location)? I know a few scuba companies who would kill to be able to single in on English backpackers in Sydney, but there are plenty more uses.
Conversion Tracking
If it’s not broken, don’t fix it. If you’re Facebook, and it’s broken, just remove it. They removed conversion tracking for any of the following reasons:
- It didn’t work and they couldn’t be bothered fixing it.
- Feedback from advertisers was that ROI was low.
- They just couldn’t be bothered trying to offer something that Google Analytics could do better.
Flexible Page Ads
Any advertiser should know by now that Facebook users hate leaving the site – and when they do their conversion and engagement metrics are pitiful. So, allowing Facebook advertisers to promote Facebook pages was genius. Not only are they taking revenues, Facebook users aren’t ever leaving.
It’s for that reason that advertising pages should be made easier. For example, you can’t change the title of your ad – it’s locked as the page’s title. There’s obviously an anti-spam element to this, though a simple fix would be to include the page title in small copy at the bottom of the ad or underneath the title. Then there’s little chance of misrepresentation yet advertisers can still shape their ad copy to their objectives.
Account History
The benefits of being a long-time, successful Facebook advertiser are very few. Unlilke AdWords there appears to be little or no consideration for account history: your ad’s performance is entirely individual and, I am assuming from experience, resets at the end of the day.
Seems fair? Not really. You can start your day bidding 30c and paying 20c. With a good CTR your CPC might drop to 10c. Here’s where it gets interesting: if you continue to raise your bid you can get even more impressions yet barely raise the CPC. Perfect, right? Until the next day begins and you’ve got a 70c bid. All of a sudden you’ve got no account history and your CPC is 60c.
If you want to play rodeo on your account then this can actually play to your benefit, but the set-and-forget type advertiser either misses a lot of traffic or simply pays too much.
Dynamic Values
This was one of the few requests that triggered a short, negative response from our Facebook Account Manager. Using dynamic values (names, ages, location, etc) in adswill never happen, we hear. It was worth a try…
Extended Payment Options
Facebook Ads began allowing PayPal payments some time ago, but it’s still very inflexible. No pre-pay billing? Are you serious? There is invoicing available for accounts over $10k, luckily, but if you’re a small advertiser: expect to have a charge from Facebook for every individual day you advertise.
No Bulk Uploads
I beg you, make it easier! I want to create campaigns using Excel. The response from Facebook was that yes, this is actually possible. I looked for the option for some time, hoping it would show itself if I remained patient. It didn’t.
I called again recently and was told that this has to be individually activated by their team. Perhaps my request for this to be added as a feature wasn’t direct enough to be considered a request that it be added as a feature to my account.
I’ve asked again and wait in anticipation.
Simple Period Selections
You’ll find many impracticalities and grievances in any product if you use it for hours each day, but this has got to be the worst. By default the account and campaign period is set to Lifetime. Not ideal, really.
You can’t simply change it to ‘This Month’ or ‘Last Month’ either – apparently Facebook reports in 7 day blocks, so you should too. There’s that, ‘Today’, ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Custom Date Range’. I’d like to see some event tracking on this and calculate how much time advertisers waste entering in the month’s date range (and then re-entering it once the page refreshes. That’s right, no page carry-over).
When you select an individual ad it all changes again: it’s only weekly and be damned if you want anything else.
Locked Account Settings
When I sent this to Facebook this was a massive problem for us. I have to admit, it’s been fixed to some extent now that Facebook allows linked advertiser accounts. It’s still not ideal, but then, changing the time zone and currency seems to be something that many platforms struggle with (ahem, AdWords).
And your requests?
I invite you to add your own requests below!