Bids are moving from the ad level to the ad set level. Are you prepared to take advantage of this change to structure?

Facebook campaigns used to be so simple. You'd create ads with copy and a target audience, and then drop them into a campaign with a budget. But a major change in March introducing ad sets - along with another change this month moving targeting, placement and bid settings to the ad set level - has made Facebook ad account structure a little more complex.

In this post, I’ll walk you through these changes to help you take advantage of these changes and structure your Facebook ad account for success.

How Facebook Structure Has Changed

March 2014 Change

Back in March, Facebook introduced “ad sets” to the account structure. This additional layer between campaigns and ads promised to make it easier for you to organize, optimize and measure your ad performance.

After that change:

• Campaigns became where you defined your objective.
• Ad sets became where you defined your schedule and budget.
• Ads became where you defined your creative, placement, audience targeting and bid.

New Structure

In August, Facebook announced a major change to structure that moves many ad attributes to the ad set level.

• Campaigns are still where you define objective.
• Ad sets are still where you define schedule and budget, but also where you define  placement, audience targeting and bid.
• Ads are now where you define the creative only.

Rollout

These changes were scheduled to begin rolling out on September 1, but have been pushed back to September 15 , 2014 according to Jon Loomer .

My Thoughts on This Change

When ad sets were first implemented, Facebook recommended we to split up ad sets by audience and include several different ad types in each ad set. This, Facebook promised, would enable them to optimize ad delivery to use the best-performing ad for each objective and audience. However, this was much harder than it needed to be because targeting still lived on the ad level. Every time you created an ad for an ad set, you had to configure the audience to make sure it matched.

This is a great change because it makes it possible to test different creatives without having to redefine the bid and targeting. You simply create an ad set, add multiple creatives, and then test for which one works best.

Search advertisers that are familiar with the “ad group” structure used in Google AdWords and Bing Ads would expect targeting to be defined at the ad set level. Finally, it is.

One thing that still frustrates me with this new structure is that budget is defined on the ad set level, rather than on the campaign level like it is with other ad networks. Fortunately, I hear Facebook will soon be adding a campaign spend cap to address this, along with advanced delivery controls and audience management “in the near future.”

How to Structure New Facebook Ad Campaigns

Let’s now go over how you should structure your Facebook campaigns in light of the recent changes.

1. Create a campaign for each objective.

The first step is to define your objectives and create a campaign for each of them (e.g., create a campaign for generating mobile app installs).

2. Create an ad set for each audience.

Next, create ad sets for each of the different audiences you want to target for this objective (e.g., baby boomers, new parents, etc.). You'll also set your bids and budgets at this level, according to your goals.

3. Create multiple ad variations.

Finally, populate each ad set with multiple ads. These ads will inherit all of the settings from the ad set they are placed in (e.g., bid, audience, etc.), but can still vary in ad type. Create a handful of different ads so that Facebook's system can optimize delivery across the different variations and ad types.

For more help, check out this best practices guide from Facebook.