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This post was updated in September 2024 to provide you with the latest information.

An Overview of Facebook Ads Manager

The Facebook Ads Manager is a free tool available to assist you in your advertising efforts. It’s your all-in-one tool for creating ads, managing when and where they’ll be placed and tracking how well your Meta ad campaigns are performing.

You can use it to create, run and tweak the specifications of your ads. Using the Ads Manager allows you to target your ads to the right audiences, set your budget, see which of your ads are working, and view your billing information, payment summary and payment method information—all within the Meta Business Suite. This should not be confused with Facebook Business Manager, which provides a broader view of both organic content and paid advertising.

Are you ready to learn the essential steps to manage your campaigns through Facebook Ads Manager? Let’s jump in.

How to Access the Facebook Ads Manager

You have a few ways of accessing the Ads Manager and they will vary according to the platform you are using.

Desktop

• On your Facebook homepage (facebook.com), navigate to the left-hand side menu and click See More to expand the list of options.

• Once the additional options appear, scroll down until you find Ads Manager. Click on it, and you will be redirected to the Facebook Ads Manager interface.

• If you navigate directly to the Ads Manager site, you’ll be taken to your personal account by default. Switching to a different account is simple:
  • Click on your profile image on the left side of the screen to switch to the correct Business portfolio, or
  • Click on the dropdown menu next to Campaigns, then select See More Ad Accounts to choose the business or ad account you want to manage.

Mobile

• Download the Meta Ads Manager app from the Play Store (for Android devices) or the App Store (for Apple devices).

• If you already have Facebook installed on your device, the app will recognize your account and prompt you to click Continue to link your account to the Ads Manager app.
  • If you want to use a different account, simply click on Not you? to log in with another Facebook account.

• Once logged in, you’ll be prompted to select the ad account you want to manage.

• And that’s it! Your screen will now display an overview of your campaigns, and you can start exploring and managing your ads through the Meta Ads Manager mobile application.

Exploring Meta Ads Manager: Managing Your Facebook and Instagram Campaigns

Your Meta Ads Manager interface is organized into three main tabs—Campaigns, Ad Sets, and Ads. Here’s a closer look at what each tab offers:

Campaigns

This tab allows you to view and manage all your campaigns. You can create, duplicate, and edit campaigns, update campaign names, or change end dates.

It also provides insights into each campaign’s performance, allowing you to export or share results in .csv or .xlsx formats. You can customize the columns and use breakdown options to analyze your campaign data more effectively.

Ad sets

Viewing the Ad Sets tab gives you much of the same options as the Campaigns tab, but focuses on one specific ad set within a campaign. Along with everything mentioned above, it gives you the opportunity to edit your ad set and update not only the name, but also the placement, budget, scheduling and targeting.

Ads

The Ads tab allows you to focus on one single ad within an ad set in a Facebook campaign. In addition to editing the budget and viewing performance, you can use this tab to preview your ad and see how it appears across your selected Facebook ad placements within the Meta advertising network.

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Further Reading

Learn More About Your Audience with Facebook Audience Insights

The Facebook Audience Insights tool offers valuable data to help marketers understand their target audience. It provides information on page likes, geographic location, household demographics, and purchasing behavior.

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Best Practices on Facebook Advertising

• Always use high-quality photos. Whether for business or personal use, only upload high-quality images to social media platforms to ensure your content looks professional and engaging. Make sure your ads fit by learning the Facebook ad sizes.

• Avoid ad fatigue. To prevent your audience from seeing the same ads repeatedly, regularly update your ad creatives. Introduce new ads instead of just modifying existing ones to keep your content fresh and engaging. Keep your ads fresh with the latest Facebook ad formats.

Managing Your Facebook Ads From Inside the Office and Beyond

Now that you know all the benefits of using Facebook Ads Manager, go ahead and use the tool to improve the way you manage your Facebook campaigns.

Remember you can also download the Facebook Ads Manager app to manage your ads from home, the airport or rooftop lounge whenever you feel like it. Take advantage of the inspiration as soon as it strikes, since it doesn’t always happen in the office.

The post An Overview of Facebook Ads Manager appeared first on Strike Social.

Get exclusive content on paid social media.

Join our mailing list for the latest updates.

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This post was updated in August 2024 to provide you with the latest information.

Improve your Targeting with Facebook Audience Insights

Designed to help marketers learn more about the audience they want to reach, the Audience Insights tool provides relevant data for Facebook advertisers, such as page likes, location, what your target audience’s household looks like, and buyer behavior.

Audience Insights differs from Facebook’s Page Insights because it looks at trends about your current or potential customers across Facebook, whereas Page Insights looks at interactions with your page (e.g., likes, comments, and shares).

As with many Facebook tools, Audience Insights is free and user-friendly. Follow the steps below to improve your Facebook strategy and hone tactics for creating winning social media advertising campaigns time and time again.

How to Use Facebook Audience Insights

Step 1: Access Audience Insights

• Go to the Facebook Business Manager page.
• From the left-hand menu, select Insights to open the full overview.
• To view your Audience Insights data, click on Audience.
• On the Audience Insights screen, you will find three key tabs:

Trends: View metrics like follower count (based on the selected timeframe), post views, and follower engagement.

Demographics: Analyze the age, gender, and location breakdown of your followers.

Potential Audience: Based on your follower and engagement data, Facebook suggests an audience size and demographic, helping you refine your content and advertising strategy.

Step 2: Create an audience

To fully utilize the Audience Insights you have gathered from this tool, start by creating a custom audience.

• Hover your mouse over the left-side menu and click on All tools. 
• Search for “audience”, then click on Audience under Advertise.

• A new window will open, leading you to the Audiences section in Meta Ads Manager.

• Click on Create audience, then select Custom audience. 
• Select your source to begin customizing your audience list.

Once your audience is labeled as Ready, you can start using it for Facebook advertising, targeting based on the data from Facebook Audience Insights.

• When setting up your Facebook ad campaign, go to the Ad Set level.
• First, go to Audience controls and select your target location.
  
  To change the location, hover the mouse over the current location settings and click on the “X” that will appear on the right side of the box. Depending on your suggested potential audience from the Facebook Audience Insights tool, you can target by country or city.

• Scroll to Advantage+ audience. From here, you can segment your audience by age, gender, interests, people connected to your page, and more advanced data such as behavior, language, education, work, etc.
  
  Quick tip: Add your custom audience created in the previous step and create a Lookalike audience to target similar audience profiles from your target country.

After setting up your audience, continue with the rest of your Facebook ad campaign setup.

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Further Reading

Discover Advantage+ Audiences Insights from a Strike Expert

In our annual training, our Meta specialist from Strike Social provided an overview of Meta Advantage. The Meta Advantage+ Audience feature complements Strike Social’s AI capabilities by helping broaden the audience while remaining within the brand’s target demographics.

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Step 3: Play with the data

For example, we’ve created an audience in Chicago with both men and women between the ages of 25 and 54. Our audience likes the winning combination of entertainment and TV shows. Let’s follow this audience, as suggested by the Facebook Audience Insights tool.

Quick tip: To refine your target audience, continue adding segments by updating the Detailed targeting section. Notice how the audience size changes as you add or remove parameters.

Step 4: Get granular

It’s time to explore the new Facebook Audience Insights tool by examining the three main tabs that reveal what our audience looks like. Unlike the old Facebook Audience Insights tool with six tabs, the updated tool has streamlined its insights into:

• Trends,
• Demographics, and
• Potential audience.

Tab 1: Trends

The “Trends” tab provides a snapshot of your audience’s behavior on Facebook. It shows the average number of followers and returning viewers, along with engagement metrics like comments, likes, shares, and ad clicks within the last 30 days (or your selected timeframe).

For instance, if you’re tracking follower count as a secondary Facebook metric in addition to your primary goal (e.g., Awareness), this is an excellent way to monitor your progress at a glance.

This tab also highlights the most active times for your Facebook page’s audience. By analyzing the frequency of activity graphs, you can see when your audience is most engaged. For instance, our Facebook Audience Insights suggest that our followers are most active between 12 AM to 3 AM and 3 PM to 9 PM.

Tab 2: Demographics

The “Demographics” tab breaks down your audience by age, gender, and key locations.

For example, our current Facebook audience, primarily based in Chicago, consists of 58.4% men and 41.6% women. Interestingly, the age demographic skews towards 45-54 years old, with a decline in older age segments.

At the top left of this screen, you can view your total lifetime followers and switch between your Facebook or Instagram pages (if applicable) on the right-hand side.

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Further Reading

Can Non-sports Brands Succeed in Targeting Sports Audiences?

Exploring how brands and advertisers use sports-focused content can reveal new ways to boost campaign engagement, build emotional connections with audiences, and foster brand loyalty.

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Tab 3: Potential audience

The “Potential Audience” tab reveals how to expand your reach based on your audience’s current behavior. For instance, the data might suggest targeting more women, as they represent a significant portion of your most engaged audience. Additionally, you might discover that your content has a strong reach among the 55+ age group.

Use this data to fine-tune your audience segmentation, boost engagement, and achieve better results for your Facebook advertising campaigns by targeting the right audience.

Step 5: Put your Audience Insights to work

Are you satisfied with your audience? Can you use it to improve messaging and engage with Facebook users? If yes, remember to name and save your audience so you can use it to refine your targeting when advertising on Facebook.

If you plan to create many audience segments, you can do so by returning to the Audience tab in Facebook Ads Manager. There, you can select which audiences to use depending on the ad campaign you are looking to launch.

Conclusion

The Facebook Audience Insights tool can help you improve your ad campaigns and messaging. It ensures that your Facebook ad campaigns reach the right people and get the right engagement and clicks. Experiment with different parameters to truly understand the power of this valuable tool.

The post Improve your Targeting with Facebook Audience Insights appeared first on Strike Social.