Let’s face it, the UI for the Ad Manager in Facebook is horrible, especially if you’ve got a large set of campaigns & are having to deal w/ the ebb and flow of interns rejecting + accepting ads (not to mention deleting/re-submitting them after they’ve been rejected).

Apparently there are other scripts/add-ons available that make this process a whole lot easier, but as was recently pointed out over on the WickedFire Forums, there’s a guy out there who’s actually trying to sell this script for $99.95 (or if you’re dumb enough to send him $25 now to secure your spot in the ‘pre-order’ the script would only be $85 after his discount). He’s since updated his blog to announce that his program would not be released on time after-all, adding that:

…Some rookie on WF totally stole my steam and posted some FireFox plug-in that works pretty sweet with FB to do lots of stuff I had planned.

Well, that rookie just knocked out a working script in one night (while allegedly drunk) meanwhile you’ve only been talking about the project since November 20th….hope you learned a lesson in being quiet.

Nathan from WF from just released what he claims was a drunken coding effort, but regardless is a great Greasemonkey script that streamlines managing Facebook ads. He even was so kind enough to add in a ‘dickroll’ option allowing you to partake in the kind of entertainment that only makemonies.com can provide.

You’ll need the Greasemonkey Firefox add-on in order to use this, install that first from the mozilla add-on site then, after installing & restarting Firefox, download and open (with Firefox) Nathan’s fbo.user.js script (which should then add it to Greasemonkey). Just head on over to the Facebook Ad Manager and partake in your newly acquired abilities of awesomeness.

Some brief features:
Here’s the old campaign screen, forcing you to click through far too many screens just to perform basic ad management functions:

Here’s the improved campaign screen, now with added shortcuts:

Now this wouldn’t be complete without the MakeMonies shout-out…
The Old Menu Bar:

The *New* Menu Bar:

What? An offer only available if I live in:

Hey, that’s me…sign me up!

Making a user think they’re looking at a local company or offer is an old trick that typically meant you’d have to download and install a location database and then call it using php/perl. Well, not anymore. Part of Google’s AJAX API is a geolocating service. It loads fast + barely takes up any space….great for testimonials or redirected users to specific pages based on their location. It’s a well established marketing theory that consumers will always feel more secure (i.e. more likely to open their wallets up) with someone they can relate to. What’s an instant way to relate to all your customers regardless of how big of an affiliate scum-bag you are? By making them think you’re both from the same city.

It might be a few miles off for some locations and give you the city next door, but over-all it’s pretty spot on and a great little tool that’s only a few lines of code. Best of all, you don’t need any type of Google developer key as it’s not tied to any specific website (i.e. you don’t need to register the site for it to work). Enjoy

Here you go:

<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://www.google.com/jsapi"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
if (typeof(google.loader.ClientLocation.address.city) != null) {
  document.write(google.loader.ClientLocation.address.city
  +", "
  +google.loader.ClientLocation.address.region);
} else {
  document.write("Unknown location")
}
</script>