Dive Brief:

• Facebook upgraded its Ads Manager and Power Editor ad platform tool, giving marketers access to more data and providing visibility into metrics all the way to a single ad.
• A main change in Ads Manager is a new user interface that puts data about ads in close proximity to where marketers create and edit ads.
• According to Facebook the goal behind these changes to its ad platform tools is to make it easier for marketers to create, optimize and monitor ad campaigns.

Dive Insight:

Facebook aims to give marketers a leg up. The social network's improvements to two of its ad platform tools -- Ads Manager and Power Editor -- will make it simpler for marketers execute ad campaigns.

The most notable change in both tools is an upgraded user interface. For Ads Manager, data about campaigns is viewed next to ad creation and editing functions. As Facebook put it, the new streamlined layout brings performance metrics to the forefront of the tool. The new Power Editor layout is larger and features an edit pane, and also allows marketers the ability to search ads and campaigns. Currently these upgrades are in testing by a select group of advertisers, but Facebook is said to expand availability to all advertisers over the coming months.

This improvement to Facebook’s ad platform could be seen as way to gain inroads into Google’s lead in online advertising revenue. In a VentureBeat article, John Koetsier, vice president of research for VB Insight, VentureBeat’s research practice, said, “Google has been the unchallenged leader for some time, with perhaps 30% of global digital ad revenue. Facebook is much smaller, at maybe 10%, but it’s accelerating while Google is decelerating.”