In March Facebook made a change to how they allowed advertisers to run their ad campaigns and they have just made and released a new change, essentially restricting who advertisers can target within one campaign. Targeting more than one type of audience was discouraged with their changes in March however with the new update this will no longer be possible at all.
In March, Facebook released the new advertising schedule which looked like this:
Campaign: Objective
Ad Set: Schedule and Budget
Ad Creative: Creative, Placement, Targeting and Bidding
Now they have made changes so it looks like this:
Campaign: Objective
Ad Set: Schedule, Budget, Bidding, Targeting and Placement
Ad Creative: Creative
Below is the advertised updates to the ad sets:
What this means is that the details of the advertising campaign will already be set prior to arranging the creative. So for instance the target audience will be shaped before the advert is created, whereas previously you could create the ad then create schedules and target lists for that one ad campaign.
Why is this change happening?
It will simplify the process certainly – instead of needing to add different ad sets per campaign only one will need to be added. It does also mean that for Facebook they are likelier to receive more ad sets as many advertisers arrange different campaigns for the same ad, including different bidding and scheduling.
When will the changes take place?
They are being rolled out this month although final migration will happen by January 2015. Previous campaigns will not have to switch to the new interface until this time.
Are there more changes afoot?
In the statement Facebook released about these changes to ad sets they did also indicate there would be further changes or improvements for advertisers on the way. This is likely in the direction of “advanced delivery controls, audience management, and a campaign spend cap”.
The aim seems to be to simply the process for advertisers while allowing greater control over advertising schedules and budgets. The benefit to Facebook may be a greater number of ad sets and therefore ad spend perhaps.