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How to Create Facebook Ads for Mobile Devices

June 23, 2012 By 31 Comments
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On June 19, Mashable wrote a story about how Facebook Mobile Ads Earn 2.5 Times More Than Desktop Ads. Sounded great, but…

I had no access to these ads. Or I didn’t see how I could access them. Funny thing is that this wasn’t the first time I had read reports about features available within Facebook ads that I hadn’t seen. So what is the deal?

Finally, I figured out the missing link: Facebook Ads Power Editor.

power editor How to Create Facebook Ads for Mobile Devices Not sure what I’m talking about? You’re not alone. If you manage Facebook ads through Facebook.com, you may have seen the link to Power Editor on the left hand side. Or you probably ignored it.

Power Editor is a Chrome plugin that’s been around for about a year. It’s supposed to make it easier to edit Facebook ad campaigns and ads in bulk. I had tried it before and thought it was crap. But now there’s reason to use it.

It turns out that some rather important features are available only within Power Editor and the Facebook Advertising API. If you had been creating ads on Facebook.com, you’ve been at a disadvantage. Here are the main things you can do within Power Editor and the Facebook Advertising API:

  • Advertise within the News Feed in addition to the right side bar;
  • Advertise within the News Feed only;
  • Advertise on mobile devices;
  • Have access to options of CPM or Optimized CPM for Page Like Objectives.

facebook ads mobile How to Create Facebook Ads for Mobile Devices

I’ve been freaking out about the new Facebook advertising with Optimized CPM because it appears to be letting in SPAM and I thought there was no longer a way to use the old CPM (not optimized) method. Turns out, it’s still available. If you know how to get it.

cpm optimized cpm facebook ads How to Create Facebook Ads for Mobile Devices

I can’t believe I’ve missed this. And since I missed it, I’ve gotta assume most advertisers (especially those advertising through Facebook.com) are missing it as well.

The big advantage to using Promoted Posts is that you can advertise within the News Feed. It turns out that you can advertise within the News Feed with other advertising units as well.

And Mobile!

Man, this changes everything. And if the Mashable story is true, we need to advertise more on Mobile. I at least want to test it out.

Stay tuned. My test is underway. I’ll have a report along with a Power Editor tutorial coming soon…

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Jon Loomer About Jon Loomer

Jon Loomer is a digital marketing consultant with a unique perspective on social media. He was introduced to Facebook in 2007 while with the NBA (back before Pages) and has been using Facebook for business ever since. Stay in touch by liking his Facebook Page (Jon Loomer Digital).

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  • http://twitter.com/PolOFearraigh Pól Ó Fearraigh

    Hi Jon, how is your test going? I have noticed this setting in Power Editor but I am in Australia and it looks like it is not clickable here.

    • http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

      Oh, good question! I haven’t gotten around to updating this.

      When I created campaigns, I would create variations of each ad to be shown on mobile only, desktop only, in news feeds only, etc. One of the main things I found is that my ad was rarely shown on mobile. When they did run, it was generally expensive. I had an optimized mobile Page Like ad run that was $15.57 CPM (compared to $8.21 desktop optimized for the same ad). I found that the mobile ads were equally as effective as the desktop ads, making them less efficient overall due to CPM.

      Like I said, I’ve struggled getting my mobile ads seen, so this is a small sample size. But make what you will with it.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/jessica.sappenfield Jessica Sappenfield

    Hi Jon,

    I’m in the US and this setting is also non-clickable for me. Any idea why?

    • http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

      Hi, @facebook-6500540:disqus! Are you using Power Editor? Otherwise, I haven’t heard of this issue.

  • http://marketing.comboapp.com/ ComboApp- Mobile App Marketing

    I’m afraid I have to say that I observe the same thing – when I set to display my Sponsored Story on Mobile only I see very modest exposure, within 10k users. For some odd reason my ad is in Pending status for couple weeks and I can’t see any error message which would prevent my ad from going live.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/martin.brown.7777 Martin Brown

    Hi Jon, within power editor I can see (for placement) “All”, “Desktop only” and “Newsfeed only”. I cant see any references to mobile? Is the mobile option restricted in any way (country, advertiser etc.?

    • http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

      Hey, Martin. The type of ad matters. If I’m not mistaken, you have the options for placement for all Facebook ad types except for the standard Facebook ad.

  • Tom D

    Hey John…..great article on something there is not a lot of documentation on. I’ve bookmarked your blog….thanks.

    My question – has anyone actually been able to place a sponsored story on MOBILE that leads to an outside link? (ie. does NOT lead to a destination within Facebook but instead leads to any other url such as an e-commerce site or lead generation site)?

    Is this possible somehow? I can’t figure out how to do this in Power Editor, but I have seen a couple sponsored stories on my phone that do this!

    Can anyone help?

    • Tom D

      Sorry Jon…not John!!

    • http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

      Hey, Tom. You can promote “Sponsored Stories” (Page Like, Post Like, Page Post Ads) to mobile devices, but you can’t create a standard ad that drives people to an external website in mobile. In other words, if you write a Facebook post with a link in it to an external site, you should be able to promote that on mobile devices.

  • Phil

    Hi Tom, You left us on this posting with: ”
    Stay tuned. My test is underway. I’ll have a report along with a Power Editor tutorial coming soon…” any update?

    • http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

      Thanks for the follow-up, Phil! I’ve been using ads on and off on mobile devices, but not enough consistently to come to many conclusions. Overall, it’s been expensive, the ads don’t run often and it just hasn’t been that effective. But I’ll continue to monitor.

      I wrote a Power Editor tutorial here:

      http://www.jonloomer.com/2012/06/25/facebook-power-editor/

    • Tom D

      Hey Jon and Phil……thanks for the replies. That seems like the same issue we’re having. Seems like our ads are running but getting extremely low volume, making them just about useless. I assume Facebook is trying not to bombard these kinds of ads at this point in time.

      Please keep any updates rolling! They are much appreciated considering this topic is a bit of a blackhole right now.

      Cheers

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  • http://www.BlitzMetrics.com Dennis Yu

    Mobile gets higher CTR and a lower CPC– you get your cake and eat it, too! http://fbppc.com/mobile/facebook-mobile-ads-are-how-youll-kill-it/

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  • Faisal

    Hi Jon,

    Quick question: It seems like Facebook newsfeed (only) ads only allow you to advertise page posts, and sponsored stories, correct? I say this because each time I try to advertise my fan page, with “page likes” being the objective, I get an error. I am able to upload and run newsfeed only ads (desktop + mobile) but when I try to do mobile only, it doesn’t upload, due to error.

    Let me know what you think please.

    • http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

      Correct, but you should run Page Like sponsored stories in News Feeds (I do).

      • Faisal

        Thank you for your advice Jon! My facebook fan page is a brand new page and I’m trying to build an audience. I was hoping to run newsfeed based facebook ads to get good ROI. How would you recommend I advertise my bran new fan page, while taking advantage of the newsfeed ads?

        Thanks a million!

        • http://jonloomer.com/blog Jon Loomer

          If you have an email list, you can use Custom Audiences to target ads at people who have subscribed to your content but haven’t yet liked your page. You’ll definitely need to use marketplace ads in the early going. You can also create Sponsored Results (search) ads to target people searching for related brands.

          • Faisal

            That makes sense. Thank you for your quick replies Jon. This is the first time I’ve visited your blog, and you’ve def. have made a fan out of me :)

  • Faisal

    Hey Jon, please take a look at this screen shot of mine. This is one of my brand new fan pages on Facebook; as you can see it only has only one fan so far. The reason why I want to show you this screenshot, is because I’ve uploaded this ad from the power editor, and it was approved. Only thing is, it’s a direct ad, and not a sponsored story/promoted post, and it’s meant to be viewed only via desktop newsfeed and mobile newsfeed. I’m wondering since this ad was approved, how would it actually show up, since FB is only allowing sponsored stories and promoted posts to be advertised via the newsfeed channels?

    Thank you again for taking the time out of your day to answer my questions, Jon. I appreciate it!

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