July 5, 2018
Why the heck did Facebook get rid of power editor?
It took my three hours to do simple campaign duplicates, swap out some settings, and change a few ad names. I couldn’t find anything. I kept forgetting that you need to uncheck campaigns before copying over the one campaign you want. I duplicated ads into multiple ad sets because I had multiple ad sets checked. I’d hit “Quick Duplicate” and an ad would be put in the ad set that was checked rather than the copied over ad set. And, whenever I would publish my drafts, I would get that dreadful spinning circle and I couldn’t really see what was being published. True, my Facebook skills may be slightly rusty but three hours?
It may be user deficiency but I miss power editor. It was easy to navigate. When the announcement was made last September about combining editor with ads manager, I didn’t pay too much attention because I wasn’t working often in Facebook. Now, I am in Facebook daily and realized how much had changed since the merge.
I miss working offline and the drafts. Facebook new ads manager still allows advertisers to work in drafts, but you have to publish your changes before exiting. Advertisers are not able to leave the manager without reviewing and publishing their changes. Automatic drafts workflow is a similar way to make edits within the interface that don’t publish immediately, but it isn’t the same. And figuring out how to move from workflows left me dazed and confused – still haven’t figured it out.
So why did Facebook get rid of power editor? It was a way to make things easier for advertisers, to have everything in one place. They updated and optimized one single platform so that all reporting, editing, and posting is done all in a single place. Maybe in theory it is easier, but I fumbled my way around trying to figure it all out.
Updates Wish List
Here are a few things I would like to see updated in the new manager that would (possibly) make my life easier:
- A selection or option to still work offline without publishing changes
- For some reason, knowing that I am working offline gives me ease if I mess up or need to make a change
- A single report view that you could click on with your important metrics.
- You can save custom columns as your default when you log into your account. Rather than exporting a report, it would be nice to have a report view without exporting.
- Along with a single performance report view, it would be awesome if we could look at an account in different views. It would be great if we could do a quick URL check, or a quick tracking check.
- An easy way to do a bulk upload, similar to AdWords Editor. If you are making bulk edits to an ad or ad set, it would be way less time consuming and less disorganized if you didn’t have to go in ad by ad to make an edit.
Closing Thoughts
Hopefully no one else has taken multiple hours in updating a few campaigns. It was not a good use of account management time, but I learned through first-hand experience. It will be interesting to see the other changes that Facebook makes to the new interface; I am confident that they will always be making things better and better with their platform.
Does anyone else struggle navigating the new Facebook set up? What are things you’d like to see in the Facebook interface? Check out Facebook’s introduction of the new updated ads manager here.