Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GM Says Facebook Ads Don't Work, Pulls $10 Million Account

forbes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 267 posts

Re: GM Says Facebook Ads Don't Work, Pulls $10 Million Account

#91

Post by fizx »

dlytle wrote: post #64
bradgessler wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... or Facebook ads don't work.

Probably Facebook ads not working. Two of my friends run a wedding planning business. They gave up on targeted Facebook ads because they got MUCH better results using Adwords. The ads were targeted to a nice big radius that included Lincoln, NE (a college town) and Omaha, NE (a big city, for NE). They targeted women in a specific age range, and if I remember correctly only women with a status of Engaged or In A Relat…

That same strategy made my brother a full summer of wedding photographer bookings for ~$130 (circa 2009).

Re: GM Says Facebook Ads Don't Work, Pulls $10 Million Account

#92

Post by veverkap »

mmaunder wrote: post #73

Facebook's root problem is intent. Users who are googling something and seeing AdWords ads are looking for something and often the thing they're looking for shows up as an ad so they - suprise! - click the ad and often become a conversion once on the site. With Facebook there is zero helpful intent. The only intent when you're on Facebook is to use Facebook. And if you do click an ad, you're less likely to become a c…

Dave's party was awesome.

:)

This is very true. I only go to Facebook to use Facebook.

Re: GM Says Facebook Ads Don't Work, Pulls $10 Million Account

#93

Post by hkmurakami »

mmaunder wrote: post #73

Facebook's root problem is intent. Users who are googling something and seeing AdWords ads are looking for something and often the thing they're looking for shows up as an ad so they - suprise! - click the ad and often become a conversion once on the site. With Facebook there is zero helpful intent. The only intent when you're on Facebook is to use Facebook. And if you do click an ad, you're less likely to become a c…

>With Facebook there is zero helpful intent. The only intent when you're on Facebook is to use Facebook.

This might be the case right now, but what about in the future? I think that's what Google et al. are scared about. If users spend 90% of their internet time on Facebook, and Facebook figures out how to serve users with "What they are looking for" 5 years down the road, then users will have a very low barrier to trying out the Facebook "look-up" service.

Right now, my use of the internet is (1) sites I already know exist, or (2) Google, in order to find things.

What if this becomes (1.1) Facebook, to look at things served from other sites that I like, and (1.2) Facebook, to find things that I don't know about?

That's scary for companies counting on the status quo. Sites' share of user time is important not for how they are now, but how things might become in the future. It's a huge about of leverage.

Re: GM Says Facebook Ads Don't Work, Pulls $10 Million Account

#94

Post by matthewcford »

franciscoapinto wrote: post #84
wvenable wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When watching TV the intent is to watch TV, not purchase soap, a car, or a soft drink. It might be that Facebook's ads are simply the wrong type/style for the kind of interaction people use it for. It does seem like Facebook ads feel like Google search ads.

> When watching TV the intent is to watch TV, not purchase soap, a car, or a soft drink. The difference being that facebook doesn't make you watch a 10 second ad between each one of Dave's party photos.

Clearly this is where they're failing.. should also inject pre/post roll ads on all videos

Re: GM Says Facebook Ads Don't Work, Pulls $10 Million Account

#96

Post by kposehn »

That's a $10m account of money wasted by unimaginative people.

You can go nuts with FB ads, you just simply have to get past the notion that it works the same way as every other medium. Unlike AdWords, where you bid on someone searching for "Cadillac SRX" in San Jose, FB is all about inception of interest.

The goal is to create intent in people through innovative ways; the people that spend the millions and keep doing so are the ones who actually, you know, come up with something new.

This is the same story as Google AdWords back in the day.

Re: GM Says Facebook Ads Don't Work, Pulls $10 Million Account

#97

Post by kposehn »

dlytle wrote: post #64
bradgessler wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... or Facebook ads don't work.

Probably Facebook ads not working. Two of my friends run a wedding planning business. They gave up on targeted Facebook ads because they got MUCH better results using Adwords. The ads were targeted to a nice big radius that included Lincoln, NE (a college town) and Omaha, NE (a big city, for NE). They targeted women in a specific age range, and if I remember correctly only women with a status of Engaged or In A Relat…

Your friends probably tried to do the same thing that they were doing on AdWords, but targeting people instead of keywords. (I am assuming here, so please correct me if I'm wrong)

This doesn't work because they have to approach the people differently; for wedding planning, I would instead do something along the lines of "read these 10 tips to keep your wedding amazing" or "use our free wedding plan tracker"

With an approach based on interest, your friends can educate people and get them thinking in order to follow up for more information. Instead of a hard sell, hit them with a soft one that helps them feel like your friends know what they need.

Re: GM Says Facebook Ads Don't Work, Pulls $10 Million Account

#99

Post by kposehn »

mmaunder wrote: post #73

Facebook's root problem is intent. Users who are googling something and seeing AdWords ads are looking for something and often the thing they're looking for shows up as an ad so they - suprise! - click the ad and often become a conversion once on the site. With Facebook there is zero helpful intent. The only intent when you're on Facebook is to use Facebook. And if you do click an ad, you're less likely to become a c…

> With Facebook there is zero helpful intent. The only intent when you're on Facebook is to use Facebook.

It isn't about intent - it is about interest.

> And if you do click an ad, you're less likely to become a conversion because your intent is still to get back to Facebook as soon as possible and see the rest of Dave's party photos or whatever.

Not necessarily. I'm working with a customer right now where I have a 24% conversion rate on movie tickets. They routinely shell out $7-$21 a pop with this conversion rate; the catch is, I have to be very careful about who I target.

This kind of trend goes across the entire industry of FB ads - target well, optimize and approach based on interest and the money will follow.

Re: GM Says Facebook Ads Don't Work, Pulls $10 Million Account

#100

Post by kposehn »

jvanderwal wrote: post #27

With a click-through rate of about 0.051% on Facebook ads [1], I'm not too surprised by this. They also made some changes over the past month to their ad payments, in particular removing the option to manually set your CPM (which is the only option to pay to promote your fan page - it's CPC for an external site). So put together a poor CTR and losing some control over how much you're spending, and this is what happen…

0.051% is actually pretty good. Don't compare with Facebook, compare with other DSP and ad networks for banners - FB and Google are complete opposites.
Post reply on HN