Facebook has long been a powerful tool for businesses to reach new and existing customers. With all of the recent changes to Facebook’s algorithm, though, it can be tough to know how to use Facebook advertising effectively.
One great resource that is often overlooked is Facebook’s Ad Library. The Ad Library contains data on all active ads on Facebook, as well as insights into how those ads are performing.
This data can be invaluable for your clients in understanding which ads are working best for them and why. Make sure you check out the Ad Library whenever you’re creating or optimizing an ad campaign for your clients!
What Is Facebook Ad Library?
When you are running ads on your Facebook business page, Facebook will keep track of all your ad costs. Using these records, they calculate the total advertising spend for a particular time (your billing cycle). They refer to this information in their Reporting Dashboard for easy reference.
The calculation is based on the combined amount of money spent paying third-party companies to promote your business page or website through sponsored stories, mobile app installs, or engagement stories — over which Facebook directly controls.
Here are a few of its key features:
- You can download all of your ads from any period.
- You can see who viewed or clicked on your ads.
- You can see who took action after clicking through to your website.
The Ad Library is not a solution in itself. Instead, it is meant to be used with your other marketing agency efforts. Marketers should not use the Ad Library exclusively or as their only data source.
However, by using the Ad Library in combination with other survey tools like Google Analytics and cost per click (CPC) reports, marketers can more quickly identify areas of improvement for their advertising strategy.
How Does Facebook Ad Library Work?
Any agency with a business manager or those given business manager roles can use the Facebook Ad Library. This will then allow agency employees (and agency partners) with an Ads Manager role (or above) full access into the agency’s ad account.
This works in both directions; client accounts will be able directly to access any department within an agency if they are given agency-wide access in the agency’s business manager account.
However, this is possible only when agency employees with an Ads Manager role have been given access to manage ads on behalf of the agency. In addition, agency owners and agency marketers can be given ad account management permissions (i.e., view and download all agency ads) without having a Facebook Ad account themselves.
How To Use the Facebook Ad Library
Here’s how you can use Facebook Ad Library to create more competitive ads and campaigns:
- Know what works best for your audience: With access to much greater data, you can now gather better insights about each of your target audiences and choose the right creative approach for different demographics or locations.
- See what your competitors are using: Seeing what other advertisers are doing helps you determine which images, colors, and call-to-action text to use to differentiate yourself from competitors or craft a more effective landing page on your website.
- Compare how ads perform against each other: With the Facebook Ad Library, you can also see if the same images and copy generate a better response than your current ads. If so, it might be time to re-evaluate everything from your target audience to your bid strategy to achieve a higher conversion rate while spending less money on advertising.
- Test different ideas: This big data allows us to test many different variables at once without creating separate campaigns every time we try something new!
- Analyze what’s working vs. what’s not: Having a clear view of all your ad performance at one time makes it easier to separate signal from noise.
To build a successful digital marketing strategy, it’s important that marketers have the tools they need. We recommend utilizing Facebook’s Ad Library for your clients, so you can find out which ads are most effective and what content is resonating with your audience. This will help you create an engaging campaign that optimizes performance across all channels.