Meta Announces Ad Campaign Set-Up Process Improvements to Better Align with Primary Goals

Although it's a little late in the year for major system changes, Meta has snuck in one more before the holidays, announcing that it'll be making some major changes to its ad objective listings in Ads Manager, to simplify and streamline the campaign setup process by enhancing the focus on the most practically relevant options and tools.

They're changing the goal selection experience when launching new campaigns in Ads Manager to better steer marketers to the best campaign setups. They're transitioning to an outcome-driven ad experiences model (ODAX), in which advertisers can choose their desired business outcomes (e.g., Awareness, Traffic, Engagement, Leads, App Promotion, Sales), and the interface will direct them to the best campaign setup/creation paths to achieve those goals. That will mean a redesign of the Ads Manager interface, as shown in the screenshots below, with the present setup procedure on the left and the new ODAX system on the right:

As you can see, the key difference is a reduction in objective possibilities from 11 to 6, as well as a move away from the 'Awareness,' 'Consideration,' and 'Conversion' banners, to make it obvious what each objective stream is and how it may be used in your promos. Which is understandable. Those segments are more aligned with ad industry lingo, which your average SMB owner is unlikely to be familiar with, and by narrowing the objective options even further, newcomers may be able to achieve better results by focusing their options on the ad tools and processes that will work best for their goals and objectives.

This graph depicts the shift in objective alignment:

The changes, which will primarily affect advertisers who use Conversions, Messages, and Video Views campaigns, will be gradually rolled out through 2022, according to Meta. There is no set date for a switchover or change, but it will happen at some point. Right now, Meta is notifying companies that use its advertisements API to alter their procedures in advance of any consequences, so if you're a regular advertiser, you won't notice much of a difference right away. However, a change is on the way that will affect your Facebook and Instagram marketing campaigns.

With a more streamlined, simplified ad setup technique, it could be beneficial in better aligning your campaigns with your actual, desired goal. However, it may be constricting in some aspects. We won't know for sure until the new system goes live later this year.