For many businesses, Facebook Ads (and now Instagram Ads) make up a significant part of their marketing strategies. Even small and medium businesses benefit from testing and running a variety of different ads, both to see what works, and to appeal to more audience members.
Many businesses, eager to start out with Facebook advertising, choose the easy-to-use Facebook Ads Manager for their first few campaigns. And while Ads Manager is certainly capable of running basic ads, the limitations of the platform eventually prompt them to scale into Facebook’s professional platform: Power Editor.
There’s just one big problem, though: Power Editor is very complex.
Sometimes so complex that some businesses switch back to Ads Manager, or abandon their Facebook advertising effort altogether.
It’s for these pain points that we created AdEspresso, but we also understand that many advertisers want to have a full understanding of Facebook’s professional system before they upgrade to ours. So for those that have made up their mind that they want to learn the ins-and-outs of Power Editor, this guide is for you!
In this Power Editor tutorial, we’re going to go over those benefits compared to Ads Manager, the features currently exclusive to Power Editor (even we have to wait a few days to get them at AdEspresso), recent changes to the interface and everything you need to know to navigate and understand the platform.
What Is Power Editor?
Power Editor is Facebook’s mass ad creation tool. It was designed to make bulk ad creation and editing simpler and more efficient.
Power Editor is Facebook’s bulk ad creation and editing tool.
Within Power Editor, you can create new campaigns and ads, duplicate and edit ads for split testing, monitor or pause campaigns, create new Lead forms and Canvas Ads, and export the information from your campaigns to a .CSV file.
Safari and Mozilla users will also be quite sad to hear: Power Editor is only available when using Google Chrome as your browser.
Why Use Power Editor?
Power Editor’s mass ad creation makes it the ideal solution for businesses or advertisers who want to create multiple ads quickly. This is particularly true when you want to split test campaigns; Power Editor makes it easy to duplicate one ad and change what you need to on its clone in just a few clicks, speeding up the creation part of split testing.
Within Power Editor, you can also group your ads into different ad sets or campaigns, making it easy to monitor their success and compare the ads you’ve created against their A/B test alternatives.
However, if there’s one major reason to use Power Editor over other platforms, it’s this: to get access to new features as quickly as possible.
Whenever Facebook rolls out new features, Power Editor will be the first place you can access them.
Features Currently Exclusive to Power Editor
When Facebook rolls out new features, you will most likely want access to them as soon as possible. Not only can having them help your campaigns in general, but users may also be more interested in new formats of ads when they’re brand new and unfamiliar (which is how I felt when I saw my first Canvas ad a few months back).
Significant Facebook Ads features released in the past on Power Editor first included:
Behavior & purchase activity targeting
Instagram Ads
Device targeting
Custom & lookalike audiences
Optimized bidding
Video ads
Many of these advertising options and features that were exclusive to Power Editor for a while are now commonly used by the majority of businesses and marketers on Facebook Ads. Device targeting, for example, is making a huge impact on driving mobile app installs, and we all know how important all types of custom audiences are to increase conversions and nurture leads.
At AdEspresso, we typically get the new Power Editor features within a few days to weeks after the release. Here are some the features that have recently been released on Power Editor (and aren’t available on Facebook’s Ad Manager):
Facebook Lead Ads. Facebook Lead Ads (also frequently referred to as Lead Gen Ads) were rolled out late last year and were designed to make it easier than ever to capture leads using Facebook Ads. Originally released for mobile placement only, lead ads allowed you to create customized forms that users would fill out on Facebook (instead of being taken to an off-Facebook landing page), with Facebook filling out as much information automatically as possible.
Lead Ads have been hugely successful in generating high-value leads and have recently had additional features created for them. Lead Ads are now available for desktop as well, and though they can be created through the Ads Manager, I’m currently unable to create lead ad forms anywhere but in Power Editor.
Facebook Canvas. Facebook Canvas was rolled out to businesses in the past few weeks, and it’s a huge deal. Canvases are interactive “experiences,” which can feature multiple “pages” users scroll through on their mobile devices. These components can feature images, image carousels, videos, and customizable CTAs. They can be run as Facebook Ads, and they can be formatted in multiple different ways.
Most advertisers can only create Facebook Canvas Ads through Power Editor though you can request access to it through the Ads Manager.
Dark Posts. Dark posts aren’t ads, but instead are unpublished posts that aren’t shared to your timeline, and will only show up in targeted users’ newsfeeds. They’re like ads, but you don’t pay for them. Dark posts are, simply put, targeted free posts distributed to relevant members of your current audience. They’re a great tool for message testing and can help increase engagement by getting the right content to the right people. You can learn more about dark posts and how to make them here (which includes a tutorial on how to create dark posts through our software).
Dynamic Product Ads. Dynamic product ads are a great solution for advertisers who want to connect a large product catalogue with relevant users; they make it possible to do this in a timely well, using Facebook’s tracking pixels to show users ads with images of the products they’ve just seen.
They do this without marketers having to create an individual ad for each product; instead, they upload their product catalogue and create a dynamic template. This template can feature unique images, product names, and product descriptions for each product in your catalogue. Learn more about how to create dynamic product ads through Power Editor here.
Bulk import of images.
Bulk import and export of campaign information.
While these are the features currently exclusive to Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads via Power Editor, keep in mind that all future features will likely also be rolled out via Power Editor, so you never know what will come next.
Understanding the Facebook Ad Campaign Structure
When I was only running small numbers of campaigns for a nonprofit I was working for, I remember seeing a post or two about the updated Facebook Ads campaign structure and didn’t understand why it mattered at all. I wasn’t sure why it mattered what “structure” determined bids, or targeting, or the creative; the ad process seemed to be the same regardless. That’s because I was creating ads through Facebook’s Ads Manager instead of Power Editor.
In Power Editor, the Facebook Ad structure actually matters. Grouping multiple ads into an ad set or a campaign, for example, can help divide up ad spend equally and can help you to organize your ads and campaigns much more easily. This is a huge benefit.
More than that, you may struggle to use Power Editor if you don’t understand the ad structure. Fortunately, the campaign structure makes a lot of sense, and it’s easy to understand.
The campaign structure is as follows:
Campaigns. A campaign defines your objective, like sending clicks to your website, promoting a post, or getting views on a video.
Ad sets. Different ad sets can fall under one campaign. Within your ad set, you’ll choose your targeting options (and, therefore, your audience), a budget, a schedule for your ads, and your ad placements. You can also set your bid at this stage if you want to, but setting a bid (at least for now) is purely optional.
Ads. Ads define the specific, individual ads that will be shown to users on Facebook, and it covers all the creative. Within this section, you’ll upload an image or video (or multiple images), set the text, CTA button, and anything else that fits under the creative umbrella. A completed ad is the final product that the user will see once it runs, so this part matters. Multiple ads can fall under one ad set, and it’s at this level where ads are most commonly split tested.
I like to group ads into an ad set when split testing since it makes it so easy to compare them and evaluate their success as the campaigns progress. It makes it much easier to see what’s working and what’s not, because you’re getting an organized look among different groups of ads and ad sets.
Again, the Facebook ad structure doesn’t matter much in the ads manager, but it matters a great deal in Power Editor. Organizing different campaigns, ad sets, and ads together utilizing this structure can make split testing easier, as your budget will be allocated between the ads equally, and it’s easier to monitor the progress of the competing ads by grouping them together. Refer back to this if you need to while we’re going through the Power Editor tutorial.
Recent Power Editor Changes
Late last year (2015), Facebook updated Power Editor and made some changes. Though it was a bit confusing at first (who likes a system they’re familiar with to change? I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t), the changes make a lot of sense, and will be beneficial in the long run as you begin to adapt to the new system.
The majority of the recent Power Editor changes came in the design, as the interface was given an overhaul, though several other functional aspects of Power Editor changed, too.
The important Power Editor changes that matter most to businesses and marketers include:
Changes are saved to the server. Until the recent update, the work you did in Power Editor were saved locally and stored in your browser. Now, the work you do and changes you make in Power Editor are automatically saved as a draft to one of Facebook’s servers, so you can access these changes from another computer.
You still need to “upload” the changes in order for them to take effect, but you’ll do this through a “Review Changes” button instead of the old upload button, and they’ll be there ready for you unless you discard the changes you’ve made. We’ll look at both of these in the tutorial where we focus on navigating Power Editor.
Navigational updates. Where before Power Editor’s navigational system relied mostly on hidden drop down menus, most navigation needs are now spread out across the menu at the top of Power Editor’s interface. Not only does this make it easier to find what you’re looking for (especially for new users learning the system), it also offers more room to view the information on your screen, including longer lists of campaigns, ad sets, and ads.
Filter and search improvements. Power Editor’s latest update also offered us increased organizational abilities, allowing us to filter and search our ad campaigns, ad sets, and ads more effectively than before. This makes campaign monitoring easier than ever, making the process of locating specific campaigns faster and more efficient. We’ll take an in-depth look at this in the tutorial focused on filtering and organization in Power Editor in the next section.
Discard changes button. We talked about this a bit in the changes being saved to the server bullet point, and we’ll look at it more in the navigating Power Editor tutorial, but it’s still significant enough to get its own bullet point. Before, if you did an hour of work on multiple campaigns or ads in Power Editor, if you wanted to undo only some of those changes, you would have to manually go and change the campaigns back. Now you have the option to discard unpublished changes, so long as you do so before you upload the changes via the “Review Changes” button.
The Complete List of Power Editor Tutorials
Power Editor can seem intimidating at first since it doesn’t start with a “create an ad” button that walks you step-by-step through everything; there’s a certain amount of sorting through different sections of the interface to get to what you need.
To make it simpler, we’re breaking down our massive Power Editor tutorial into multiple, manageable sections. We’ll look closely at the basics of navigating Power Editor, how to create and monitor ad campaigns, how to pause or edit campaigns, importing and exporting information, and split testing with Power Editor.
Navigating Power Editor Tutorial
To use Power Editor, you’ll first want to understand how to navigate it. In this tutorial, we’re going to look at where to find different tools through Power Editor and how to get to where you need to be.
We’re going to start with Power Editor’s home screen, which will automatically fall under the ads manager tab. It looks like this:
There are several things you can see in the above image. The one I want to point out now is how at the top, next to the “Power Editor” label, it says “Account:” and my name followed by a number. If you’re managing multiple pages for different businesses, you can access those accounts here.
Underneath this, you’ll see the primary navigation bar. There are tabs for “Manage Ads,” “Audiences,” “Image Library,” “Reporting,” “Page Posts,” and “Tools.”
In the right-hand corner, you’ll see the “Review Changes” and “Discard Changes” buttons.
When you click on Review Changes, it’ll ask you which changes you’ve made you want to upload. If there are any errors that need your attention, they’ll be flagged here.
If your changes have been saved, you’ll see a screen that looks like this.
On the other hand, if you want to discard changes to get rid of unpublished changes, simply hit the discard button.
Under the Audiences tab, you can view current saved audiences, or upload new ones.
Your image library will show all the images you’ve uploaded and are currently available to use for your ads.
You can drag and drop multiple images to upload them at once.
Reporting allows you to create reports on specific ads to monitor their success.You can customize the columns to show the metrics you value most and want to see.
The page posts tab essentially gives you the Insights on all of your posts, including engagement and reach.
Here, you can also see scheduled posts.
Under the tools tab, you’ll see options to create and view conversion tracking pixels, see your account settings, and fill in or adjust your billing information.
This is basic information you need in order to navigate power editor. Our following tutorials will focus on specific goals and tasks within Power Editor.
No matter what, remember to hit “Review Changes” and to upload your work not only to be saved as a draft but to become active in the system once you’re ready; otherwise your new ads (or changes to current ads) won’t be uploaded and able to take effect.
How to Create Ads with Power Editor
Creating ads is one of the biggest purposes Power Editor serves. It’s the most important part of Power Editor. Since the update, it seems to trick new users up a bit (which is why I’m writing this tutorial).
We’re going to start all the way at the very beginning. From the home screen, you can see the “Create Campaign” button right under the “Manage Ads” tab. Click on it.
From there, you can choose an existing campaign, or create a new one. We’ll create a new one for this tutorial. When you name your campaign, you’ll also choose your objective and whether you want it to be based on an auction buying type or a fixed price buying type.
Once you’re happy with your campaign, you can choose to create the first ad set that will fall under this campaign. Under the ad set, you can create the first ad for this set. In this stage, all your doing is naming your ad and ad set. Hit the blue create button in the bottom right-hand corner.
This is where people can get confused. To navigate and edit all the way down to the ad level, you need to be able to access and set up your ad set and ad. On the very left hand side, you’ll see how the campaigns are broken down into ad sets and ads. This is the navigation tool. When you click on each level, it takes you to view it, and from there you can edit your ads.
When you click on the ad set level, you can see the details for your specific ad set and edit it.
Here, you’ll set your budget, schedule, placement decisions, and audience targeting options.
You can also choose optimization and pricing, and choose your ad delivery. The ad delivery options include standard, which shows your ads evenly throughout the day (unless otherwise scheduled), or accelerated, which shows your ads as quickly as possible.
Once you’re happy with the ad set, just click to the ad on the left-hand side navigation. You’ll be taken right to the new ad you need to create. You’ll first choose a Facebook Page to connect to the ad and, if you’ve enabled the placement, an Instagram account.
Once you do, you’ll be in the creative section. You can either create a new ad from scratch, or use an existing post.
When creating a new ad, you’ll first choose if you want to use a singular image or video, or multiple images for an image carousel ad, as seen above.
You’ll then add in the website URL to send users to. You can also choose a canvas (or create a canvas) if you want to run canvas ads.
Next, you’ll fill out the text for your ad. This includes the headline and product description.
Then you’ll choose an image or video if you don’t like the default image that pops up, as well as a call to action.
Underneath that, you’ll have the ability to track conversions, and to choose which conversion pixels you want to use.
On the right-hand side, you can see what your ad will look like in all different placements in all parts of the creation process.
Once you’re happy with your entire campaign, you can “Review Changes” and upload them to get them sent for review and approval.
How to Stop, Delete, or Edit Campaigns
Though you can schedule campaigns to have a certain end date, there are a plenty of reasons that advertisers may want or need to delete, pause, or edit campaigns that are running currently or will be running soon.
To delete, pause, or edit a campaign, ad set, or ad, the method is all the same; you just need to identify what you’re looking for, and the actions and buttons are all the same.
For this example, we’ll focus in on the ad level.
First, locate the ad. You can do this by searching for it or finding it via a filter (as shown in the image below) or by finding it under the “ads” category.
Next to the ad, you’ll see a “status” column with a blue switch. If you click on it and it turns grey, you’ve paused your ad.
To edit your ad, hover over the title of it. You’ll see a pencil and a drop down arrow pop up. The pencil allows you to rename your ad, and the drown down menu gives the option to edit your ad.
If you decide to delete a campaign, ad set, and/or ad, make sure that it’s highlight on the level you want to delete it at. Make sure that only what you want to delete is selected, because once it’s gone you can’t get it back, and there’s no pop up screen asking if you’re sure. Once selected, click on the trash can delete button, shown in the image below. It will be deleted instantly.
How to Import & Export Information with Power Editor
As great as it can be to view the information available in Power Editor, plenty of businesses and marketers will want to export that information off Power Editor to save and review in another format. On the other hand, you may want to import some information into Power Editor (such as an email list for a new custom audience, for example).
To import or export anything to or from Power Editor, you’ll click the import/export button, which is shown in the image below. It opens a drop-down menu.
With Power Editor, you can import ads in bulk. You can import entire ads, done in the form of an excel file, and you can import bulk images.
When importing bulk ads, you can download the template necessary to fill out (which you can find from the import/export drop down under “download template.” It comes as an excel file, but be warned: it has options you can fill in literally from A to Z, and then going all the way out past AZ to BN. It’s a lot to fill out.
When exporting information from Power Editor, you can choose what you want to export. You can export information that comes from what you’ve selected (and you can choose to have it exported in text), or a custom export. It will download into a .CSV file.
Split Testing with Power Editor
Split testing should be an essential part of any business’s long-term marketing plan for Facebook Ads. It helps keep your ads fresh and updated, which will keep the frequency and the cost of your ads low, and the engagement up. It also helps you to identify which ads are working, which aren’t, and can teach you a great deal about the content your audience is receptive to. Split testing can result in creating better ads immediately, as well as stronger ads long term, thanks to learning what works and what doesn’t.
Power Editor and Power Editor alternatives make split testing much more effective than it would ever be through Facebook’s Ads manager. In Power Editor, you can easily duplicate one ad, make the change you need to, and have it set and ready to go. This is much faster than it would be if you were to go through the Ads manager’s Create an Ad, where you’d have to recreate the entire ad from scratch, and potentially not make the ads “otherwise equal” on accident.
I like to keep all ad that I’m split testing against each other not only under one campaign, for obvious reasons, but also under the same ad set. This makes that the split test easier to follow when monitoring the campaigns and evaluating success. It also ensures that the ad spend is divided equally.
Until last year, Facebook would automatically optimize certain ads within an ad set to get more or less of the overall ad spend for that ad set, depending on their own algorithms and predictions. Because of this, it was hard to get a true split test, with some ads running more than others. This changed in an update in the middle of last year; since then, ad spend is divided equally between all ads within an ad set. Split testing is more effective than ever.
This is the process I use when creating ads to split test:
First, create an ad set specifically for the split test. This isn’t strictly necessary, but I prefer to have all ads in a split test under one ad set to divide spending evenly and make the evaluation process easier and more reliable.
Under the ad set, create the first ad.
After the ad has been created (though it does not yet have to be approved), you can view it on the ad level. Check the box next to it, highlighting that ad, and locate the duplicate button in one of the menus at the top of Power Editor. The duplicate button is two squares, one hovering over the other, as seen in the image below. Click on it.
You’ll be asked if you want to keep the same campaign, create a new one, or use an existing (but other) campaign. Keep the same one.
You’ll immediately be shown a duplicate of the first ad, the only difference being that “- Copy” will show up in the name of the ad. Don’t forget to change the name to keep your ads straight.
Your ad will be fully created and loaded, so change whatever it is that you need to for the split test, and it’s ready to go.
You can replicate these steps as many times as you need. Many marketers recommending split testing at least four different ads at once, altering something in the creative to see what works.
AdEspresso’s software ensures that creating ads for split testing is even easier, giving you the option to add multiple images, headlines, and other variations whenever you create an ad; you can do this all at once, so you never even have to duplicate the ads to make the changes later. Contact us for more information.
Final Thoughts
While using Facebook’s Ad Manager to create ads may be more user-friendly initially, Power Editor offers a large number of unique benefits and advantages for businesses or marketers who run a large number of Facebook Ads. When it comes to bulk ad creation and editing, split testing, and getting access to new-to-Facebook features, Power Editor (or Power Editor alternatives, like ours at AdEspresso) is unrivaled in value and efficiency. Because of this, Power Editor is an important tool that should be utilized to continue to create high quality, highly successful ads.
What do you think? Which tutorial did you find the most helpful? Do you use Power Editor to help create better ads? Which Power Editor features do you use the most? Share your thoughts, knowledge, and experience in the comments below- we want to know what you think!