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Facebook CPC – Don't Waste Your Money

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Re: Facebook CPC – Don't Waste Your Money

#61

Post by simias »

will_brown wrote: post #30

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 d…

There's a good analysis for this phenomenon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag

It was posted on HN a while back. The gist is that there's a high chance that your ad was clicked by click farms, even though you bought it legitimately from facebook (in an effort to fool clickfarm detection, apparently).

What's even more interesting is that not only are you wasting money buying the ads, you also end up with less legitimate "likers" seeing your content because of the way facebook propagates new posts. So you're actually paying to get negative results.

Re: Facebook CPC – Don't Waste Your Money

#62

Post by Riseed »

y4mi wrote: post #41
will_brown wrote: post #30

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 d…

i believe the current theory is that the illegal bots hide their paid likes by liking innocent pages as well...

Yes. Here's a video (by youtube user Veritasium) that walks through an experiment and explanation, for those who are interested.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag

Re: Facebook CPC – Don't Waste Your Money

#63

Post by Tohhou »

y4mi wrote: post #41
will_brown wrote: post #30

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 d…

i believe the current theory is that the illegal bots hide their paid likes by liking innocent pages as well...

This is what is happening.

Re: Facebook CPC – Don't Waste Your Money

#64

Post by mpeg »

sp332 wrote: post #19
mpeg wrote: post #6

Why would you send mobile FB clicks to your website? Send them to a mobile app on mobile (!!!) You can target only desktop users, if you want to send people to a website

What's wrong with a mobile web browser?

Ads that direct to web on mobile just don't perform as well

Re: Facebook CPC – Don't Waste Your Money

#65

Post by danra »

While it's definitely possible that OP's ad campaign sucks, that's not the main point in the article, so how come many comments focus on that?

The post's conclusion is that there's a strong indication of Facebook charging for mis-clicks and double charging for non-unique clicks.

Re: Facebook CPC – Don't Waste Your Money

#66

Post by sanswork »

cmapes wrote: post #54
sanswork wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were your conversion rates like through other sources?

This is the important question. I've seen copy for largely untargeted convert at wildly different rates dependent on the copy quality and the quality of what's being offered.

Yup copy on the destination, copy on the ad itself can change the conversion rate quite a bit too if you're attracting the wrong sorts of people for your product. Too many variables left unexplored with 1 or 2 ads on one traffic source to one landing page.

Re: Facebook CPC – Don't Waste Your Money

#67

Post by ameister14 »

bigbugbag wrote: post #56
austenallred wrote: post #20

This is a single campaign, and a single test, with one set of variables. Concluding something overreaching like "Facebook CPC ads don't work" after a test like that is like saying, "I tried mixing two chemicals, and there was no reaction, chemicals must not cause reactions." Think of it like a computer program. If 99% of the program is right but one thing is broken, the entire thing won't work. Marketing is, in a lot…

Please enlighten us about those right circumstances that somehow magically turn facebook ads into successful and profitable campaigns.

Well, I used to scrape audiences from open groups in order to get extremely targeted segments. That works.

Re: Facebook CPC – Don't Waste Your Money

#68

Post by lojack »

will_brown wrote: post #30

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 d…

Those likes are coming from black hat marketing.

If you pay for 500 likes, and 500 different accounts are created to like your page its obvious your page is gaming the system. Likewise, if you have a voting ring of 500, its easy to see what pages those 500 accounts are liking. However, if you have a voting ring that votes randomly while ensuring anyone that pays gets 500 of the votes then its much harder to find out who is gaming the system.

Re: Facebook CPC – Don't Waste Your Money

#69

Post by mpeg »

bigbugbag wrote: post #60
mpeg wrote: post #6

Why would you send mobile FB clicks to your website? Send them to a mobile app on mobile (!!!) You can target only desktop users, if you want to send people to a website

I assume you are a mobile app developer looking for a job. I don't know a single user who enjoy being sent to a mobile app instead of the website. If being hated by your users is not enough of a deterrent, then factor in the cost of building said apps on mobile platforms and maintaining them through time and new smartphones versions while having a website versus simply having a website. Unless you're a big corp with…

Not really, I used to work at one of the main Facebook SPMDs so I'm saying that out of having seen the performance of mobile app campaigns on advertisers that spend $100k+ a day on fb.

I don't see why you would be hated by your users? The ad makes it super clear that it's an app, it takes you straight to the app store where you can read reviews / description / screenshots and then you just install it.

I think you are making the mistake of thinking that the average user is like you, most people will just want to get the app ASAP when they see an ad for something that seems useful; not having to navigate a website which doesn't have a mobile version (try budgetsimple.com in an android phone, it's impossible to use !)

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