31 May Facebook Ad Management Tools Reviewed
If you have ever managed a Facebook ad campaign you might have realized by now how painful it can be to run advertisements at scale. Although Facebook’s internal ad manager tool has its downfalls, Facebook has an Ad API which it has allowed a few select providers to leverage to create 3rd party advertisement tools. Below you will find approved Facebook API Tool Vendors. Prices range from several hundred dollars per year, all the way up to 5% of PPC spend which is typically more common with enterprise level tools that see spend levels of over 100,000/month USD.
4 Main Reasons to Use a 3rd Party Facebook Ad Tool:
- Avoiding Ad Rot
More often than not, you will notice after running Facebook ads that they tend to have short shelf lives in terms of performance. One minute they will be performing well, then after several days and millions of impressions later, they fall off the map. The reasoning behind this is over time people simply stop clicking on your ads because the ads themselves have not changed, and the system flags it as low performing. A 3rd party ad tool will give you the ability to change out ads more efficiently, helping you curb the Ad rot situation.
- Mass Editing Capabilities
If you are trying to manage hundreds of Facebook ad creative pieces then you literally have to log into each one in the Facebook backend to change them. This is not ideal by any means thus having mass editing capabilities helps significantly.
- Reusing Targeting Capabilities, Images and Ad Copy
Facebook currently doesn’t let you build targeting and filter capabilities outside of Ad groups, thus if you would like to reuse them, you simply can’t. Many 3rd party vendors’ tools do what is called flattening the experience. This allows a marketer to create reusable targeting groups, images and ad copy for optimum efficiency.
- Conversion Tracking Capabilities
Facebook used to be testing traditional-based conversion tracking so marketers could identify which ads were returning the best ROI. However, what they found was that users were spending less because in the process of tracking ROI, marketers inevitably found that the ads weren’t converting, so Facebook decided to shut down the system. If you would like to see conversion data in line with your ad group data, you now must use a 3rd party tool.
Product information on the top Facebook Ad Management Tools was pulled from here: http://developers.facebook.com/adsapivendors/
11 Top Facebook Ad Management Tools
Adparlor
Pricing: N/A – although their site states its a % on top of your total spend on the platform.
Company Description:
AdParlor currently manages over 15 billion Facebook ad impressions monthly for clients such as Ubisoft, Groupon, Publicis, and Omnicom. Access to Pulse, AdParlor’s proprietary technology, is subject to approval on a case-by-case basis given the distinct competitive advantage the tool provides within the Facebook Ads ecosystem.
Specific Features Include:
Self-Serve: Use your expertise in combination with the AdParlor technology – extensive ad creation, dynamic bid optimization, and powerful reporting – to maximize your ad spend. With the pro version, you will have access to the proprietary CPA bid optimization system that has optimized over 50 million Facebook ad clicks.
White-Label: For umbrella agencies and sales teams: White-label Pulse to leverage our technology to grow your business.
Adsage
Pricing:
199/year
Product Description:
adSage for Facebook is a Windows desktop editor that helps you manage your Facebook advertising at scale more efficiently. It offers the following features:
- Offline access to your Facebook accounts
- Easy bulk ad creation and edits
- Ad performance reports
- Discovery of targeting options with type ahead fields
- Likes & Interests suggestions and validation
- Bulk bid suggestions and estimated reach
- Export/import from Excel sheets matching the Facebook bulk uploader format
- Easy re-purposing of existing ads and campaigns by duplicating them
- Saving targeting templates
Alchemy Social
Pricing:
Alchemy’s pricing structure is hugely competitive and based on a very straightforward analysis of spend through the platform. Alchemy offers flat-fee and/or lower fees based on longer term commitment.
Pricing can also be tailored based upon target spends and can be both agency wide as well as territory wide.
Free Trial Version:
Contact via http://www.alchemysocial.com/contact for a two week trial
Product Description:
Alchemy is a sophisticated advertising solution for Facebook advertising. This Facebook Ads API tool enables you to create thousands of ad variations in seconds – enabling you to scale, manage and optimise highly targeted campaigns.
Blinq Ad Manager
Pricing: N/A
Free Trial Version: N/A
Product Description:
BLiNQ Media, a Social Engagement Advertising Company, makes it easy for big brands and agencies to deliver breakthrough results in social networks like Facebook. BLiNQ is pioneering CPSA (Cost Per Social Action) and Social Engagement Advertising to improve social ad performance while keeping costs down.
List of services provided:
BLiNQ Ad Manager provides analytics, reporting & optimization features for large auction-based social media campaigns. Features include:
- Management of multiple accounts
- Multivariate ad creative generation
- Hyper-targeting & segmentation
- Reporting on key performance indicators
- Analysis & optimization of ads
- Customized conversion tracking & integration
Clickable
Pricing:
Pro- $499/month min. or 5% Ad Spend
Pro Plus – $799/month min. or 5% Ad Spend
Free Trial Version:
http://app.clickable.com/ac/signup/signup.aspx – 15-day free trial
Product Description:
Clickable is a platform that makes online advertising Simple, Instant and Profitable. It empowers beginners through professionals to maximize their advertising investment. Clickable makes you more efficient, effective and confident.
Facebook advertising management tools:
- Ad creation
- Bulk upload
- Performance tracking and reporting, alone or alongside search marketing campaigns — all with a single code snippet.
Qwaya
Pricing:
Free 14 day trial:
- Access to all features
- Publish up to 5000 ads a day
Starter ($39/month):
- Full access to all features
- Publish up to 30 ads/day
Basic (79$/month):
- Full access to all features
- Publish up to 100 ads every day
Premium (149$/month):
- Full access to all of Qwaya
- Publish up to 5000 ads every day
Free Trial:
Product Description:
Qwaya is a next generation Facebook ads tool. It is designed to be powerful, easy to use and affordable. Qwaya offers cutting edge features and is written using the latest technology to provide the look and feel of a native application through the web browser. The interface is clean and uncluttered, allowing you to focus on achieving your business goals. There are three packages that are priced on a low monthly flat fee (no percentage of spend). The starter plan is $39/month, the basic plan is $79/month and the premium plan is $149/month. All packages comes with a 14-day free trial.
List of Services Provided:
- Fixed monthly subscription fee for Basic and Premium services, always with a free 30-day trial
- No download or sign-up required, just log on with your Facebook account and go
- Efficiently build and publish your social campaign in minutes
- Comprehensive campaign performance reporting
- Export all your data to Excel
- Make direct improvements to your campaigns and ads
- Bulk optimization – edit one or many ads at the same time with easy multi-edit feature
- Easy overview and management of multiple accounts
- Built-in image library for all your favorite images
- Manage all demographic and geographic targeting options offered by Facebook
- Get in-line feedback on the number of people matching your target profile
- Create detailed targeting variants, like age buckets or interests, with no additional effort
- Track and optimize easily on all your Facebook actions
- Drive traffic from your ads directly to your Facebook page, place, event, group and app
- Intuitive and fast user interface – try it on your iPad
- Scheduling – automate during what hour and day of the week you want your ads to be shown
- Ad rotation – Rotate ads in campaigns evenly to optimize and combat ad fatigue
- Campaign rules – Automate ads being paused when metrics like CTR, impressions, clicks etc reaches predefined goals
Kenshoo
Pricing:
N/A
Free Trial Version:
For Demo contact here: http://www.kenshoo.com/contactus/
Product Description:
Kenshoo helps the largest online advertisers exceed their ROI, sales and brand objectives. Companies like Zappos, Harry & David, Expedia, Omnicom, & Publicis used Kenshoo to generate over $10 Billion dollars last year.
SaaS based End-to-End Online Marketing Technology Platform with a focus on Search Marketing features include:
- Automated Campaign Creation from Inventory Integration
- Unified Management and Reporting
- Full Multi-Channel Attribution Management and Modeling
- Global and Hyper Geo Targeting
- Portfolio Bid Algorithms and Statistical Forecasting
Marin Software
Pricing:
4.5% of monthly spend -> 2% of monthly spend depending on volume.
View pricing chart here.
Free Trial Version:
N/A
Product Description:
Marin Software is a leading global provider of digital marketing management applications. Large advertisers and agencies use Marin Software to manage, analyze, and optimize over $1 billion in annual advertising spend, including Neo@Ogilvy, Razorfish, University of Phoenix, and Gap.
This tool can be used for Facebook Advertising Reporting, Campaign Management, and Bid Optimization.
Omniture
Pricing:
N/A
Free Trial Version:
N/A
Product Description:
Omniture, a business unit of Adobe Systems Incorporated, is a leading provider of online business optimization software for managing and enhancing online, offline and multi-channel business initiatives.
- Analysis and optimization of social media marketing
- SearchCenter+, with Facebook Integration – Measure, manage and optimize social media marketing with integrated campaign planning, execution and analytics
Brighteroption.com/sam
Pricing:
There are no hidden costs involved in using SAM, instead you simply pay for what you use on a CPC basis or as a low percentage of your overall spend.
- No set-up costs
- No minimum spend
- Pay purely based on your usage
Free Trial Version:
Free trial is offered via contact: http://www.brighteroption.com/SAM/pricing.htm
Product Description:
SAM: Social Ad Manager allows Facebook advertisers greater control and analysis over their campaigns. SAM’s ability to generate bulk creative executions coupled with a permutations targeting set- up means thousands of individually targeted ads can be created within minutes. SAM uses multi-level conversion tracking to provide companies with a deeper insight into what elements of a campaign are performing best. The sophisticated conversion tracker shows where users are falling out of the sales pipeline or where they go after clicking on an advert therefore giving the advertiser a more comprehensive understanding of their customers. SAM also makes the process of optimising a campaign easier with its ability to make bulk changes using several different metrics.
Socialadstool.com
Pricing:
- 3% – 5% of advertising budget spent on Facebook via Social Ads Tool.
- Minimum monthly fee*
- Only pay for spend generated by selected campaigns, not the entire advertising account.
- Small and medium businesses are welcome to contact us.
Free Trial Version:
Doesn’t have one but has a video demo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73mxvuPNB_E&feature=player_embedded#at=71
Product Description:
The Social Ads Tool was developed as a resource for new media marketing and advertising agencies to facilitate the efficient and effective management of large and complex Facebook advertising campaigns. The principal objective of the tool is to reduce both time and resource costs and to improve campaign performance.
Key benefits include:
- CPC/CPM Auto-bidding against target a CPA or ROI,
- Self-optimization based on a target CR
- Fast ads auto-generation coupled with bulk editing functionalities
- Multi level access control and a wide range of reporting options
- Real time conversion tracking
Images were pulled from their respective sites and from Mashable
This post was written by Brian Chappell
