NEW DELHI: Facebook has redesigned its ad buying and reporting tools based on responses from businesses.

The ad buying process will start with a simple question - what’s your advertising objective? – and the Facebook tools will recommend an appropriate ad based on that objective, and then help determine how the ads performed against the objective.

The updates, which we call objective-based ad buying and reporting, are part of ongoing efforts to make advertising on Facebook as simple as possible. In June, Facebook announced efforts to streamline Facebook ad types and provide consistency across formats. In July, ad products were streamlined, removing online offers, sponsored results and question ads. In August and September, it became possible for marketers to upload one image size that would work for all types of ads on Facebook, and the social site started offering a preview of how they would appear across Facebook.

Feedback received from businesses was that when creating an ad, they did not want to choose an ad unit - they wanted to meet an objective. Facebook then spoke with marketers of all types and sizes to uncover the objectives that matter most to them. They are: Clicks to Website, Website, Conversions, Page Post Engagement, Page Likes, App Installs, App Engagement, In-store Offer claims, Event Responses.

In turn, these objectives have become the new starting point for buying ads on Facebook. Based on the objective a business chooses, Facebook will recommend an appropriate ad-type (i.e., a Page post link ad to drive clicks to a website).