A comprehensive guide to Facebook’s new ‘Power Editor’ ad tool

Facebook June 1, 2011 9 Comments

Facebook are back with yet more improvements to their ad system, this time in the shape of the ‘Power Editor’ tool, which is an upgraded version of their bulk uploader, which was previously accessible on managed Facebook Ad accounts. This is suitable for advertisers that run larger Facebook ad accounts, allowing you to easily transfer ads created in an Excel spreadsheet. This is currently only available as a browser-based tool in Google Chrome, but this will be rolled out to other browsers soon. The bulk uploader tool will be phased out completely from 30th June, so advertisers should familiarise themselves with the ad tool in advance of the automatic switchover. Luckily we’ve made that a little bit easier for you, with a guide for how to access and use the ad tool. Note that this is only available to advertisers who run larger accounts.

How to download the Power Editor

If you have access to the Power Editor, you’ll see this in the left-hand side navigation when you go to the ad interface. You can then click on download to install this.

You may see a security message on your screen, so click on ‘continue’ to allow the download. When you open a new tab in Chrome you will now see the Facebook Power Editor as an available app :
When you launch this for the first time, you will need to download your accounts. You can choose to either import all the ad accounts for the profile you’re currently logged into, or only selected ones. You can do this by clicking on ‘download’ in the top right :

Uploading a campaign

When you’ve downloaded your campaigns, you’ll see a summary screen where you can access the latest stats for your campaigns and see at a glance who your different target markets are. From this screen you can also create a new campaign. There are 2 ways in which to do this. If you want to create one campaign, the quickest way to do this is by clicking on ‘Create Campaign’ from within the main window. This will then bring up a form at the bottom of the screen where you can enter your campaign information, including timeframe and budget :

As shown in the screenshot above, this section will start with errors, which are removed as you fill out the campaign information. If you want to upload more than one campaign, the easiest way to do this is via bulk upload, which works through Excel. To get the Excel template for this, download a campaign from within the main screen, by clicking onto an individual campaign, then copying and pasting the row into Excel. This gives you the fields that you need to fill out in order to create new campaigns. You should fill out this information but leave the Campaign ID and Campaign Name fields blank, as these can be edited within Power Editor.

Then simply copy all the rows from within Excel, including the headers and paste these back into the Power Editor campaigns tab. Here you’ll see your campaigns have been added, with the option to then add the campaign names.

Creating Ads

As with the campaigns, there are 2 ways to create ads within the Facebook Power Editor. These can be created either within the Power Editor itself, by clicking on ‘Ads’ within the main screen, then updating a new ad on the form at the bottom. You can also choose to create bulk ads in Excel, which is much more preferable if you’re creating multiple ads in a campaign. This can be a great time saver on larger ad campaigns and has some nice extra features. When you want to add an image to your ad, you can now access a gallery with all the images that have been used on campaigns, by clicking on ‘choose image’

Within this ad tool you can also access all the targeting options you’d expect to see on the manual ad creation, including Likes, Connections and demographic targeting :

You can also create new ads in Excel in the same way that you can with campaigns, by copying an ad row from within the ‘Ads’ section into Excel. This time keep the campaign ad and name, and edit the ad information, keeping the ad ID and image reference. You can then add this back into the ad screen in Power Editor by selecting all the rows and pasting them in. Though you do have the option to upload an image file, the easiest way to edit the image is from within Power Editor itself, by selecting the ad and then uploading a new image.

Import ads from Excel

While you can simply copy and paste ad rows from within Excel, you can also bulk upload ads that you’ve created in an excel document. To do this, select your campaign from within the campaign section and click on ‘Export’. This will bring up your campaign in an Excel spreadsheet. Here you can access the full information about a campaign, including budget, timings, ad text and ad targeting options :

When you are making changes to ads or campaigns within this Excel sheet, remember never to change the header titles, as this is the order Facebook needs to receive campaign and ad information in. Within this screen you can create new ads in campaigns by copying rows down and keeping all the campaign information the same, but change the ad text itself. Remember that when you upload this back into Power Editor, it will need to assign the right Campaign ID and Name to new ads, so you shouldn’t change this. Every time you want to add a new Campaign or Ad, leave the Ad or Campaign ID section blank, as Power Editor will assign the ID once the ad or campaign is created.

If you want to edit more than one campaign within this sheet, simply select the rows from within the campaign tab and export them into a new Excel sheet. This is useful if you want to add multiple ads to more than one campaign and is the best option for larger campaigns. Make sure you’re comfortable with using the Excel option first, as you could end up making errors that change your existing campaigns.

When you have made your changes to the Excel sheet, save it in the format ‘Unicode Text’ (this should be the default option when you ‘Save as’ in this document. You can then upload this back into Power Editor by clicking on ‘bulk import’ on the top right hand side and selecting your saved file. Here you also have the option to copy and paste the rows from Excel also.

Uploading Changes

It’s important to remember that any changes you make within Power Editor will not actually be uploaded until you choose to. So you can review your new campaigns/ads before deciding to send them live. When you’re happy with the changes you’ve made, click on ‘Upload’ in the top right hand corner :

Here you might get a popup screen telling you that there are errors in your ads. If so, you should review these before uploading your changes. Once this is done, your campaign changes will be made and you’re good to go!

Accessing Campaign Stats

While you can see a quick summary of all your campaigns on the main screen, you can also access more detailed stats for individual campaigns. To do this, click on your account name on the very left of the screen, and click on the arrow to expand this. From here you’ll see the individual campaigns created in that account. Select a campaign to bring up the stats in the main screen. Here you’ll see all the campaign budget information, as well as the stats and associated ads with that account. To view these stats for a particular time period, click on ‘stats’ along the top and then either choose the date options provided, or create your own custom time period :

How to edit your campaign columns

Depending on how much or little information you want to see in the campaign summary screen, you can adjust the campaign headings accordingly. In order to do this, click on ‘settings’ at the top of the page. You’ll then see a pop-up box with all the available campaign headings. Simply select or unselect the headings here, depending on how much information you want to see, or show others :


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