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We stopped advertising on Facebook

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Re: We stopped advertising on Facebook

#51

Post by the_watcher »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #38
babs474 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook style ads CAN convert in a tight window, the problem is people are looking in the wrong place for them. Nobody checks out their timeline, sees a coke ad and immediately clicks to buy. Those ads don't "convert". What does happen is the cumulative effect of those ads put your brand (coke) top of mind. Later when somebody is searching for "snacks" on google and paid search ad comes up, that person is more likel…

How does this model work when people block ads entirely online? Disclaimer: I'm 31, block all ads online, and don't own a TV. I haven't seen a TV commercial in years.

I don't think you can block News Feed ads with Ad Block, although I am not 100% sure about this. I thought they functioned like a native ad.

Re: We stopped advertising on Facebook

#52

Post by [deleted] »

netcan wrote: post #44

I think Facebook is making mistakes. Adwords grew explosively, but relative to the expectations of Facebook, Google looks patient. Adwords didn't start off with ten million customers with endless budgets. They started off letting people buy $20 worth of ads at 5¢-50¢ per click. Some people figured out ways of selling ebooks or whatnot at a profit and figured out things like split testing, conversion tracking and such…

[deleted]

Re: We stopped advertising on Facebook

#54

Post by the_watcher »

ig1 wrote: post #15

It's a pretty weak article, if they wanted to drive traffic to their site why were they focusing on getting likes rather than CTR ? Doing internal FB advertising only really makes sense if you have a strong FB presence (i.e. Facebook game or if you push lots of sharable content via your FB page).

Exactly. They went about it backwards. They should have focused on driving traffic (website clicks). A successful traffic-driving campaign has a byproduct of likes. Even better, those likes tend to be people who used and actually liked your product, rather than those who just clicked like.

NOTE: If you have less than 1000 likes, you should pay for likes until you get up to that number, as it unlocks some advertiser features.

Re: We stopped advertising on Facebook

#55

Post by sharkweek »

Their overall monetization plan with pages seems terribly short sighted. I've been pitching how to limit reliance on FB to clients for a while now, as we turn to other sources for social acquisition. I think this could be damaging in the long term for FB as this will likely become the trend.

A bit unrelated but if Facebook wants to make truckloads of money... I am still trying to figure out what the holdup is for an Adsense competitor -- I'd definitely try it on some of my content sites.

Most people browse the web logged into FB, so it doesn't seem THAT problematic from a technical standpoint. It also wouldn't be that out of place for me to start expecting ads based off of profile data.

Could you imagine how targeted the offsite ads could be? The marketer in me is already salivating over the concept.

I feel like I'm missing something incredibly obvious here.

Re: We stopped advertising on Facebook

#56

Post by the_watcher »

samsolomon wrote: post #12
joelrunyon wrote: post #2

I've spend quite a bit of money on facebook ads for various of my own businesses & clients & I've basically stopped everything for a few reasons. I can't rationalize playing FB's game anymore. With the recent decrease in page reach, you're basically paying double time for FB. Once to "get" the fans and then again to "reach" them. Sure, we saw an increase in site activity, but it was debatable whether or not that actu…

Today you have to spend money to get any of your posts shown on Facebook. I estimate that 2 percent of my audience ever see a post without paying to promote it. If you don't pay for it, posts have to be "engaging," which is why link bait titles from BuzzFeed and Business insider always make it onto my news feed, but not posts from cool projects that I care about.

Those make it to your news feed because people share them (which I guess makes them "engaging," but not in the way that engaging promoted posts are engaging). Every time a post is shared, liked, commented on, etc., the person taking the action places that post into the queue of content fighting to get into all of their friends News Feed. I believe that Zuck said there are on average ~1500 pieces of content fighting to get into any given users feed.

You can help Facebook serve your feed better by marking posts as irrelevant, uninteresting, as spam, hiding stories from certain people/sources, etc., as well as trying to interact more often with those posts you find interesting (also, share them more). One of Facebook's core competencies is aggregation and analysis of the massive volumes of highly specific data they generate. Improve your inputs and their outputs will improve as well.

Re: We stopped advertising on Facebook

#57

Post by the_watcher »

sharkweek wrote: post #55

Their overall monetization plan with pages seems terribly short sighted. I've been pitching how to limit reliance on FB to clients for a while now, as we turn to other sources for social acquisition. I think this could be damaging in the long term for FB as this will likely become the trend. A bit unrelated but if Facebook wants to make truckloads of money... I am still trying to figure out what the holdup is for an…

Facebook wants you on Facebook as often as possible. They are taking the opposite path to monetizing the same data. I'm noticing now that their FBX retargeting has gone beyond just sites I visit to sites similar to those that I have recently visited. I'm also noticing really improved cross-device consistency, as they are using my UID to link my devices when I am logged in to Facebook (across the web, as you said).

Re: We stopped advertising on Facebook

#58

Post by elbear »

scottrafer wrote: post #7

This is just silly. Even Facebook discourages buying likes at this point and says they have no value. Of course, you aren't seeing performance.

How are they discouraging buying likes if they tell you the number of likes you will get when you want to promote your Facebook page?

Re: We stopped advertising on Facebook

#59

Post by sharkweek »

the_watcher wrote: post #57
sharkweek wrote: post #55

Their overall monetization plan with pages seems terribly short sighted. I've been pitching how to limit reliance on FB to clients for a while now, as we turn to other sources for social acquisition. I think this could be damaging in the long term for FB as this will likely become the trend. A bit unrelated but if Facebook wants to make truckloads of money... I am still trying to figure out what the holdup is for an…

Facebook wants you on Facebook as often as possible. They are taking the opposite path to monetizing the same data. I'm noticing now that their FBX retargeting has gone beyond just sites I visit to sites similar to those that I have recently visited. I'm also noticing really improved cross-device consistency, as they are using my UID to link my devices when I am logged in to Facebook (across the web, as you said).

Valid point -- I suppose the functions of Google and FB are different. But even then, still seems like a great revenue stream

Re: We stopped advertising on Facebook

#60

Post by lloyddobbler »

To me, the big WTF is that Facebook has recently effectively said "If you don't pay to promote your updates, they're going to be seen by a lot less people in the future - including those who already "Like" your page.

So the decision of whether to purchase "Likes" on Facebook is now much more of a no-brainer. You're not going to see the same ROI on ad spend as you once did (and even then, the ROI was tentative at best).

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