This is a guide for transferring Automated campaigns. If you want need a similar guide for Standard campaigns there is a separate article.
Why touch my ongoing automated campaigns at all?
We advise you to read the article about the new automated campaigns.
As you will notice, the biggest change is that the old ones were producing campaigns with old objectives, and the new ones will work with new (ODAX) objectives.
The first thing to remember: Meta is stopping the delivery of all campaigns with old objectives during 2024.
It doesn't matter if they were made through Hunch or directly on Ads Manager. You need to end your campaigns with old objectives as soon as possible, and create new ones with ODAX objectives instead.
The second thing to remember: there is no real transfer, you have to turn off your old campaign and create a new one. The delivery must stop, and the learning cannot be saved.
Since automated campaigns are redone with some smaller changes, this guide will help you decide what kind of setup to make so that you get the most similar campaign to the old one and explain how to do it in the easiest possible way.
Steps for recreating an automated campaign
1. Choosing an objective
This works the same as for the Standard campaigns. There is a detailed guide on choosing an objective.
2. Adjusting catalog
The first thing you should do is check if your catalog will work at all (use our guide for automated catalogs).
Old campaigns worked with ambiguous feeds, but the new ones will require a tidy feed.
Check if your dates are in the right format.
If you have values that are already existing or predefined on Meta (like custom audience names or location names) make sure they are exactly the same. If they are not precise, Hunch will assume whatever comes up first when searching your value.
Be aware which columns will define a new product set (for example, you might want a new product set for each pair Country+Language). Then, check if the values are correct. In case you have a typo it will produce new ad sets.
3. Creating a campaign
Set up campaign
The first thing that you need to do is just mark your campaign as automated. This campaign should have at least one automated ad set to be valid.
Creating ad sets
If you know what your campaign should look like, this is the key moment to optimise your structure.
How many unique ad sets will you have? You can make a regular ad set as usual, just keep the switch for automation turned off.
How many ad sets can you create as a result of combination of values from the feed? These should be marked as automated and the automated ad set will produce them from the feed. Make sure no mistakes are made here, since you will not be able to edit these columns later.
All you need to do is:Ad set creation: Define catalog columns that will constitute unique ad sets. If we look at the picture, the columns used here are brand and vertical.
Ad set name: Brand and vertical will now be part of your ad set name, but you can still ad a prefix to it.
Catalog Filter: Define a filter - which items from the feed should be included?
Dynamic Status: You can turn on a dynamic status if you want. This will keep your ad sets on or off based on the value in this column. Two things you should remember:
In the picture, the status column that is selected from the feed is "availability". This is an ad set, so all feed items (future ads) that belong to this ad set must have the same availability, otherwise this ad set will become ambiguous and stop. In reality this will probably never happen for availability value, so this column is not a good choice for this purpose, but it could be a good choice if you want to set dynamic status on ad level (instead ad set).
This will only work if the values in the feed are "ACTIVE" for active value, and "PAUSED" for inactive value.
Creating ad sets
Regardless if the ad sets are automated or not, if you connected a catalog to your campaign you can use its values to set up ads.
Each ad can be set up as usual, but also some of the fields might be read from the feed.
Two IMPORTANT things to keep in mind:
Creating an ad in automated campaign always applies to items in a defined catalog filter, so it is not just 1 ad that you are creating, it is a group of ads. What group? Whatever falls into filter that you choose on your ad.
If your ad belongs to an automated ad set, each of the resulting ad sets will get its own instance of the ad group that you are creating.
So keep in mind - for ads that belong to automated ad sets you are creating not one ad group, but many ad groups - one for each ad set.
When you are entering fields on ad level, it will apply to every single ad.
Fields that can be read from the feed :
Dynamic status: Activate or deactivate ad based on the value in a selected column. This will only work if the values in the feed are "ACTIVE" for active value, and "PAUSED" for inactive value.
Filter selection: define a group of items that this ad will create.
Creative: you can upload a creative, use a template that is connected to this catalog, or you can read a link to a resource that is part of a catalog column ("Use feed value for creative")