• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, October 8, 2013

Facebook on Tuesday rolled out updated tools for creating and tracking ads on the social network. The aim is to further streamline the ad-buying process and make it easier for marketers to determine the effectiveness of Facebook campaigns against stated goals.

The move is part of the company’s broader effort launched this year to simplify advertising on the site, including cutting the number of ad units in half and allowing advertisers to upload one image size for all ad types on Facebook.

The latest steps focus on two main changes: helping marketers to map campaign objectives more closely to specific ad types and sizes on Facebook, and providing more flexibility on ad placement.

Advertisers will now be able to select from eight campaign objectives: Web site conversions, Web site clicks, page post engagement, page likes, app installs, app engagement, offer claims and event responses. Based on the objective a business chooses, Facebook will recommend an appropriate ad type, such as a Page post link to drive clicks to a company’s Web site.

As before, Facebook will place an ad where it’s performing best -- whether a mobile or desktop news feed, and/or the right-hand column. But since some advertisers want to control placement more directly, the revamped tools allow marketers to choose where their ad appears.

“For example, a marketer looking to drive traffic to their Web site can now place a desktop ad with a link to their full desktop site, and a separate mobile ad that links to their mobile site,” stated the Facebook blog post. “This means businesses can better tailor ad experiences based on where people will see their message.”

Facebook also revamped its Ads Manager tool -- for measuring ad and campaign performance -- to link results directly to a chosen objective. The dashboard will now show how many times a particular objective was met and the cost per result, much like Web site conversions

The new objective-based buying and reporting capabilities are now available across all of Facebook’s ad platforms, including the self-serve Ads Create Tool and Power Editor for managing multiple campaigns.