Using Facebook Power Editor to Create and Manage Ads

What Is Facebook Power Editor?

Those who work with Google AdWords may be familiar with AdWords Editor for bulk creation and editing. Power Editor is a similar tool for Facebook Ads. Instead of being desktop-based, it’s a browser-based tool currently only compatible with Google Chrome. It allows you to easily create, duplicate, and edit all elements of Facebook campaigns offline, uploading your changes to run once the process is complete.

Assuming you have an active Facebook Ads account, you can access Power Editor here or find it in the top navigation menu of Ads Manager.

Once you’re in Power Editor, your campaigns will automatically download. To show statistics from a particular date range, use the date selector to the right, above the list of campaigns. To the right of this date selector, the button with the gear symbol allows you to choose the metrics appearing in the table.

Now, let’s delve into some tips to make the most of Power Editor.

Creating a Campaign Draft

When you select the “Create Campaign” button in the upper left, you’ll enter a campaign buildout process that is basically the same as what you see in the web interface. We won’t cover this in-depth here as we have previously talked about 5 Tips for Building Effective Facebook Ads Campaigns. When contrasted with building a campaign in the Ads Manager, Power Editor shines in its ability to save an unfinished campaign as a draft. If you go partially through a buildout and want to complete it later, you can access an offline draft later from your list of campaigns.

Duplicating Existing Assets

To quickly create similar elements, you can easily duplicate campaigns, ad sets, and ads. For instance, say that you want to create multiple ad sets with the same geographic reach and budget but different age range targets. Instead of having to build each one from scratch, you can create copies to then customize the age ranges.

In this example, we’ll show a couple of different ways to use the Duplicate feature. First, check the box(es) by the element(s) you want to duplicate. Next, go up to the Duplicate button, which looks like a plus symbol. Here, you have three options:

• Click the Duplicate button to bring up a window in which you can choose to duplicate the ad set within the same campaign, an existing campaign, or a new campaign, as well as create multiple copies.
• Click the arrow next to the button and choose Quick Duplicate (or press Ctrl+D) to create one copy of the ad set within the same campaign.
• Click the arrow next to the button and choose Split Audiences to rapidly break out similar ad sets by age and/or gender.

In the above example, we’ve broken out several ad sets by varying age ranges. This will allow us to compare ad performance by age and know where to focus future spends.

Making Bulk Edits

You can also edit multiple assets on a large scale if you want to quickly change anything from ad set names to geographic targeting. Simply check the boxes next to your desired assets and click “Edit.”

For instance, say that we want to add a geographic target for all of the ad sets we just broke out by age range. We check the boxes by all of them and click Edit to see the ad set editing window. This will appear as it normally does when building or editing an ad set, except it will show “Mixed State” for any parameters that vary among ad sets. We see that message for Age in this example. Now, we can enter our desired geographic target in the Location box, and Power Editor will automatically update all ad sets when finished.

You can also use the Quick Edits button to rename elements efficiently. Ideally, you’re running multiple variations of ads with different imagery and copy. You want to be sure to label these different ads clearly so you can analyze results and highlight performance easily when viewing reports. When copying ads and changing elements, you’ll find it more efficient rename them in bulk.

In this example, we want to change the “Blue Fish” ads to “Yellow Fish.” We’ll select Quick Edits > Find and Replace from the navigation bar above campaigns. Now, we can type in the copy we want to change. Here, we’ll choose to find “blue” and replace it with “yellow.”

Publishing Your Edits

Once you’ve finished creating new elements or editing existing ones, you’ll need to publish your changes to the web. First, click the Review Changes button in the upper right.

Next, you’ll see a screen reviewing which elements have been changed, along with any errors. You can deselect any campaigns, ad groups, or ads you don’t want to upload here. Once you’re ready, click Continue to upload any changes. Assuming you have a successful upload process, your changes will now be active within Facebook Ads.

Exporting & Importing Spreadsheets

Power Editor lets you download a spreadsheet version of a campaign, make edits in Excel, and re-upload a document. If you’re comfortable working with Excel, this method can help immensely to create detailed campaigns at scale.

Select the Export & Import button toward the right above your campaign list. Here, you can choose to export all or export selected campaigns into a document that you can then edit. Within the spreadsheet, columns will correlate to fields within the online editor.

Use the Import Ads in Bulk option to upload your final doc with edits. If you want to start fresh, select Download Template, populate the document with your desired criteria, and upload it using the import option.

For more details, see Facebook’s guide to using Excel with Power Editor.

Conclusion

If you’re managing Facebook Ads and not using Power Editor, it’s worth the exploring to learn the interface and discover how you can use it to save time and gain useful insights. You don’t even have to download or install any applications! For those creating campaigns on a large scale, Power Editor offers considerable time savings. However, even if you’re managing smaller campaigns, you’ll still find multiple features useful to make your ad creation and editing process more efficient. Time saved setting up your campaigns can be used to evaluate the results instead, so that you can continue to learn and improve your strategy.