Facebook Launches Ads Manager App For iOS

Facebook has launched a new mobile app to allow marketers to manage ads directly from their smartphone. The Ads Manager app provides mobile convenience and features a wide range of functionality, including the ability to create and edit ads, track spending, view ad results, receive ad-related notifications, and more.

Although the app is initially only available for iOS, the company says that it’s working on an Android version that will be released later this year. The initial iOS release is only available in the U.S., but Facebook says that it will be rolled out worldwide over the next few weeks.

“As business owners and marketers spend less time on desktop computers and more on mobile devices, advertisers have a growing need to manage Facebook campaigns on the go,” wrote Facebook. “To meet that demand, last summer we introduced the Ads Manager mobile site, which is now used by more than 800,000 advertisers each month. Today, in an effort to make mobile ad campaign management even easier for the two million businesses using Facebook advertising, we’re launching Ads Manager app.”

The simple interface of the new app makes it possible to design ads from start to finish directly on your phone. Users can either select photos from their phone or from Page posts, write the ad copy, and then target their audience based on demographic information using sliders and buttons.

The notifications aspect of the app can be used to alert users about ads that are coming up for expiration or when they’re approaching their spending limit, as well as other ad performance metrics such as Page Likes or how an ad is performing in comparison to other similar ad sets.

Advertisers can also use the app to edit their ad budgets and schedules, as well as to update their payment methods. Another nice feature is that if you get distracted in the middle of creating an ad, which is bound to happen on mobile, you can save the ad as a draft and complete it later.

The release of Facebook’s new app illustrates a continued focus by the social media giant on improving its ad tools in recent months. These improvements have helped the company to grow its average ad revenue from each of its 206 million U.S. and Canadian users by an impressive 24 percent in Q4 2014 from $6.64 to $8.26, even though the user base itself only experienced a small increase of 0.97 percent in this same period and market. Clearly, Facebook’s recent enhancements to its ad functionality, including better targeting and improved online and offline sales measurement tools, are making a big difference.