If you’ve spent much time advertising on Facebook and Instagram, you’ve undoubtedly become frustrated with the Ads Manager tool at one point or another.

It’s slow, tedious, and even buggy at times.

Facebook’s own Power Editor aims to streamline ad creation, but complex campaigns still take time and the UI is not the most intuitive to novice users.

This is where Facebook Ads management tools come in. The primary benefits of using 3rd party ads management software are in streamlining campaign creation and automating repetitive optimization tasks.

In the early days of Facebook Advertising, one of the best tactics was to simply split test hundreds of images against each other. The ad serving tech was rudimentary enough that this tactic often meant the difference between success or failure when you found an image that performed.

The trouble was, it took hours to manually create all the ads.

Tools started popping up that allowed you to bulk upload all your images and it would create the unique ads for you automatically. This was a game changer!

Over time the tools got more complex – multiple versions of the ad copy, splitting audience segments, automated triggers for optimization, etc. Now some of the newer tools even use AI and machine learning to optimize campaigns based on thousands of data points collected over an account’s history.

At this point the Facebook and Instagram ads management software space is crowded and competitive. With all the options out there and the wildly different pricing structures, which tool is right for you?

Below is a roundup on the current offerings. Do you use a tool that is not in this list? Please send it along – we’re always eager to test new products and implement the latest tech for our clients.

1. Smartly (our top pick)

   1. URL: https://www.smartly.io/
   2. Pricing: % of ad spend based. $1,000 monthly minimum, no annual contracts, and a 2 week free trial. Pricing details here: https://www.smartly.io/pricing
   3. Best For: Agencies and medium-sized advertisers spending at least $20k/month on Facebook & Instagram
   4. Differentiators: Beautiful UI, 24/5 live chat (very knowledgeable) support, fast to implement new features from Facebook, and a strong predictive optimization algorithm given the relatively low price point.

   

2. Kenshoo

   1. URL: http://kenshoo.com/products/kenshoo-social/
   2. Pricing: % of ad spend based. Large monthly minimums and annual contracts required.
   3. Best For: Agencies and larger advertisers with monthly ad spend budgets of $100k+.
   4. Differentiators: Works well if you’re also using Kenshoo for managing your paid search campaigns

   

3. Nanigans

   1. URL: http://www.nanigans.com/
   2. Pricing: % of ad spend based. Large monthly minimums and annual contracts required.
   3. Best For: Larger advertisers with monthly ad spend budgets of $100k+.
   4. Differentiators: Strong in gaming and ecommerce with unique bidding algorithms targeted toward value-based optimization and cohort analysis.

   

4. AdEspresso

   1. URL: https://adespresso.com/
   2. Pricing: Flat monthly fee based on ad spend tiers from $49 – $499/mo with a 2 week free trial period.
   3. Best For: Small advertisers and new agencies without large budgets looking for more features than Facebook provides in Power Editor
   4. Differentiators: Low, flat fee with great features for the price. Easy to create split tests and analyze results with simple dashboards and easy-to-read metrics. Strong knowledge base with hundreds of helpful articles and tools.

   

5. Qwaya

   1. URL: https://www.qwaya.com/
   2. Pricing: Flat monthly fee not based on ad spend. Ranges from $149 – $349/month with a 2 week free trial period.
   3. Best For: Small advertisers and new agencies without large budgets looking for more features than Facebook provides in Power Editor
   4. Differentiators: Low price point with a solid set of tools. UI may not be attractive but the software is easy to learn and all plans include a free training webinar.

   

6. Marin

   1. URL: http://www.marinsoftware.com/products/social
   2. Pricing: % of ad spend based. Large monthly minimums and annual contracts required.
   3. Best For: Larger advertisers who are also using Marin for paid search management
   4. Differentiators: Marin is one of the older tools out there, but works well for advertisers and agencies who also use Marin for their paid search software

   

7. StitcherAds

   1. URL: https://stitcherads.com/
   2. Pricing: Flat monthly fee based on # of ad accounts and product feeds. Starts at $1,250/mo for 1 account and all plans include a trial period.
   3. Best For: Ecommerce advertisers and ecom-focused agencies primarily running direct response feed-based campaigns.
   4. Differentiators: Heavily tailored toward ecommerce advertisers running dynamic ads and can be relatively inexpensive if this is all you do.

   

8. Aitarget

   1. URL: http://www.aitarget.com
   2. Pricing: Flat monthly fee based on ad spend ranging from free to $500/mo for up to $10k in ad spend. All plans include a 2 week free trial.
   3. Best For: Smaller advertisers and agencies looking to improve performance of their campaigns and test out software without steep monthly minimum spend requirements.
   4. Differentiators: We recently did a demo of this tool and were impressed by three primary features – automatic dynamic video creation, dynamic ads optimization, and a slick offline events integration tool. In addition to those, it also has the regular automation and workflow tools we’ve come to expect from modern day Facebook Ads software. Lastly, they recently integrated Snapchat ads which is a bonus if you’re using that platform. Have you used Aitarget? Leave your feedback in the comments!

   

9. Automate Ads

   1. 1. URL: https://automateads.com
      2. Pricing: Flat monthly fee based on ad spend ranging from $19/mo to $499/mo for up to $100k in ad spend. All plans include a 2 week free trial.
      3. Best For: Smaller advertisers and agencies looking to improve performance of their campaigns and test out software without steep monthly minimum spend requirements.
      4. Differentiators: While we haven’t used this tool ourselves, it seems to have a solid set of auto-optimization features and a very low effective % of ad spend fee. Have you used Automate Ads? Leave your feedback in the comments!

   

10. Zalster

    1. 1. URL: http://zalster.com
       2. Pricing: 5% of ad spend with a $495/mo minimum fee and a 2 week free trial on new accounts
       3. Best For: Smaller agencies and medium sized advertisers looking to save time through automation
       4. Differentiators: While we haven’t used this tool ourselves, it looks to have a great feature set for automatic creative, targeting, budget, and bid optimization. Have you used Zalster? Leave your feedback in the comments!

    

What are your thoughts? Any tools we missed here or features we forgot to mention? Comment below and we’ll update this article as these tools continue to improve and new software pops up.

Are you looking to try a tool yourself? Contact us about Smartly.io and take advantage of what we think is the most powerful and flexible tool out there. Even if you don’t use our campaign management services, you can still license Smartly.io from us with no contracts and the lowest monthly minimum you’ll find anywhere.