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Facebook CPC – Don't Waste Your Money

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Re: Facebook CPC – Don't Waste Your Money

#21

Post by redler »

paul_f wrote: post #15

CPC is just the wrong model for Facebook. It turns into "spray and pray". In this case, nobody is looking for a personal budget app, it just shows up uninvited. Whereas with Google, we know someone is likely looking for it when the ad appears. I don't know what Facebook's long term business model is. IMO, this isn't it.

CPC is just the wrong model for Facebook. It turns into "spray and pray". In this case, nobody is looking for a personal budget app, it just shows up uninvited. Whereas with Google, we know someone is likely looking for it when the ad appears.

That's true. Since people spend a lot of time using Facebook (i.e. as a "third place" with no specific search intent), I would guess that brand advertising, brand-awareness marketing, and especially targeted ad remarketing would be their sweet spots.

Re: Facebook CPC – Don't Waste Your Money

#22

Post by rfergie »

I'm getting fed up with these post saying "Media X" is bad (where X is usually something to do with Facebook or Google display).

Two comments:

1. This media is sold in an auction. If the quality of the traffic vs what you pay for it is bad value then the bids are set too high. If I pay over the odds for something on ebay it isn't just ebay that is at fault.

2. Doing online advertising well is harder than Facebook and Google are incentivised to make clear. In some cases this stuff is very hard which is why there are people whose full time job it is to get it right.

As someone with some expertise in biddable media reading posts like this must be like a coder reading about how a programming language is flawed because the Todo app scaffolding doesn't quite do what the author expects.

Re: Facebook CPC – Don't Waste Your Money

#23

Post by netcan »

I don't know about the bot/fraud accusation, but do not listen to the conclusion here. Those bounce rates are not the overall average and it's irrelevant anyway. With any online advertising you need to track conversions. Optimize & spend based on those, not based on hearsay or anecdotes. Hearsay and anecdotes are for deciding to try it and Facebook is so big that you should try it anyway.

There are unlimited examples of failed advertising campaigns on every single medium where failure can be seen measured. Most campaigns fail. They are a cost of doing business. Generalizing based on those would be very mistaken. Facebook is a new but giant ad program. The tools are still rough and "best practices" are even rougher. The consultants...

That doesn't mean that good campaigns can't be run on facebook. Facebook allows campaigns to be run that would be impossible to run anywhere else. In some cases the ROI is ridiculous. In others it's one of few things that works.

The number one reason for all these Facebook sux rants seems to be "it's not adwords." People want their adwords campaign to work on Facebook. If Coca Cola wanted to tell you that they're "the real thing" on adwords, it would be an uphill battle. A budget app on Facebook might be hard going on fb. Maybe not impossible, but it's a squeeze.

If you want to advertise a local children's art exhibition taking place this weekend, Facebook ads will work like magic. 'Friends of friends of the gallery who live close by and have kids.' There is no other platform that gives you anywhere near the reach, relevance and context that FB gives you for a campaign like that. I would expect the "ROI" to be under a dollar per physical ass-through-door.

Re: Facebook CPC – Don't Waste Your Money

#24

Post by netcan »

paul_f wrote: post #15

CPC is just the wrong model for Facebook. It turns into "spray and pray". In this case, nobody is looking for a personal budget app, it just shows up uninvited. Whereas with Google, we know someone is likely looking for it when the ad appears. I don't know what Facebook's long term business model is. IMO, this isn't it.

Or..

This campaign failed after a few days and now it will go away. That's as it should be.

Re: Facebook CPC – Don't Waste Your Money

#25

Post by if_by_whisky »

interstitial wrote: post #4

Let's fix the title: "Facebook - Don't Waste Your Time or Money." Who wants in on the Facebook cash cow? Well, you need to be on the other side of this international scam. The click farms, the fake likes, the fake pages, the dark side that actually MAKES Zuck rich and he has no incentive to block.

No marginal incentive, I would say. I can imagine long-term incentives.

Re: Facebook CPC – Don't Waste Your Money

#26

Post by AznHisoka »

Why are you wasting your money sending mobile users? Even mobile web users are useless as most are drive-by visitors that might not get the FULL impression they'll get through a desktop browser.

Even if you optimize for mobile web, I'm sure they won't experience the true power and wow-ness of your app unless they visit it thru a desktop.

Re: Facebook CPC – Don't Waste Your Money

#27

Post by DivByZero »

The article raises some great points and it's very frustrating to read these articles as the founder of a Facebook Ads Optimization tool aimed at SMBs (AdEspresso - http://adespresso.com - Shameless plug :P).

I'm not going to say that copy was not good or that the number Facebook tracks are correct. I find the copy of the ad used pretty good overall. However I've some consideration about it:

- I totally agree that Facebook must improve its tracking and must do more to prevent clicks fraud ... a problem which is still very relevant

- Lot's of Facebook Ads traffic comes from mobile nowadays. This can be good or bad. If you're promoting a website and aiming at conversions on a non mobile-friendly website you MUST disable mobile targeting.

- Overall $50 budget is not enough to get to any relevant conclusion.

- On a product like this (budgeting, finance, etc.) it's critical to find a very good audience to target. I'd suggest using a lot custom audiences.

- Facebook Ads bounce rate & overall quality is very often lower than Google, Yahoo & Bing, this is implicit in the nature of the platform. On Google you're getting traffic from people who are actively searching for a keyword strictly related to your product. On Facebook you're targeting people based on demographic profile and a vague interest. However Facebook is very often much cheaper than Google.

- CPC & CTR are meaningless metrics. You should always have conversion tracking and measure the overall CPA to acquire a customer. Click frauds, wrong reportings etc. ... they exists. You cannot do anything about it. You should not give a crap about it. Just check your Cost to acquire a customer and see if it makes sense.

- Sometime for some markets Facebook Ads for direct conversions simply don't work. Create valuable content like eBooks, webinars etc. to get cheaper leads and then close the sales funnel with targeted emails.

My 2 cents, hope it's useful for someone :)

Re: Facebook CPC – Don't Waste Your Money

#28

Post by babs474 »

I made this comment the other day in a thread about children accidentally clicking on google display ads, but I think it also applies here. The problem is measuring the effectiveness of early funnel ads from clicks.

Here is a good presentation from the quantcast guys about the "natural born clicker" problem. The people clicking on your display ad are probably anything but actual potential customers.

Clicks is just an easy holdover metric from the paid search side of digital advertising. It doesn't make sense in the context of early funnel ads. You need to measure the effect your display ads are having on your purchasing endpoints. Which is what the whole cross channel attribution industry is about.

Its quite possible your are getting good value from facebook ads, you've just inadvertently focused in on the worst subpopulation, the clickers.

[1]http://www.slideshare.net/hardnoyz/display-ad-clickers-are-n...

Re: Facebook CPC – Don't Waste Your Money

#30

Post by will_brown »

Within the last week I performed a similar "experiment" for newly created facebook.com/AmeriStartup.

I created two FB mobile advertisements to direct traffic to the website, though the website is more eCommerce/service than any type of sign up. Budget $50 over 3 days reach was ~20,000+; the click through rate was .5% and .4% for the 2 ads; just under 100 clicks to the website with none resulting in conversion.

More disturbing was the fan page promotion through FB (paid "Likes" in my own words). $10 budget per day over 3 days; reach = 3,000+; total likes 34. What disturbed me though was when I would go to the profile page of the users who "liked" the fan page as a result of the promotion, many of the user profiles did not appear to be legit. Moreover, the majority of these users who liked the page had a single facebook post in their entire facebook timeline. As unlikely as it is that of ~30 paid likes nearly all were were inactive facebook users who were otherwise compelled to interact with my paid promotion, it is equally unlikely that facebook would be so brazen in committing fraud on advertisers by creating and managing fake accounts to click paid promotion/ads which could easily be proven. Nevertheless is begs the question what are these accounts (fake, bots, ect...) and who controls them and why?

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