I found out this very early, a few years ago when their ad platform was barely launching for everyone. I had a digital magazine and overall it seemed like a good deal, send me people interested in music from these countries at very low CPCs, nice. In total, I may have spent around $1200 USD over a month for a little more than 100 subscribers; needless to say I felt scammed. When trying to figure out what happened (w/ Google Analytics, my own event tracking code and even a few apache logs) I found out very interesting stuff, like that 99% of those clicks were people who didn't stay for more than a second on my webpage, like in: they didn't even wait for the page to load completely... weird.
Just for the record, my ads were not clickbaity and were targeted fine, and my magazine didn't suck (IMO at least heh), so if someone clicked on my ad I would pretty much expect it to stay in the page and have at least a look at the cover of the current issue.
Why did I burn $1200 if the ads weren't working from the start? I wish I had figured that out earlier and spend that money on a fancy chair or whatever instead... The thing is that I was only looking at my daily visitors and believed that everything was fine, it was until the end of the month (where I always made some kind of audit thing to see if I was growing or not) where I noticed that the number of new subscribers had remained the same even though FB ads were active all time.
Since then, the only advice I give to friends and clients is "stay away from Facebook ads, it's not what you think they are". And on a small side note, I tried a lot of advertisers at that time and the best experience I had was with StumbleUpon, their referrals converted to subscribers at an incredible ratio (like >50%!!!) and on top of that they drove some extra organic growth even a few months after then campaign was finished, respect for them.
There was also a post a while back here on HN about ridiculous Facebook click-through rates with the same kind of 1-second time-on-site stats. I forgot what the cause was.
I've been acquiring SaaS users for <$10 for awhile now at around 50 cents a click. I find the ads extremely effective if you know what you're doing and target the right demographics. That being said, the conversion thing makes total sense. There's lots of little tricks that have worked like make a campaign with over $100/day on ads and you get prioritized over the little fish and then lower it right away so you're still prioritized in their display algo but you aren't spending at that amount. If your adspend really is 100 start it higher like 1000. Lots of little tricks you can do that will tweak the system to your advantages. but buy paying for likes or showing ads to people who like candy crush or "insert corporate page" you'll probably burn at over a dollar a click to your site and most of those will bounce hence leaving an ineffective campaign.
The thing is though even if it's slightly working it's probably cheaper then AdWords, so for larger budgets/non personal it's a great way to get the same amount and comparably the same targeted traffic for less capital.
Also if the ads are so horrendous please explain the numerous ad hackers that have done TeeSpring campaigns making 100k by targeting niche at scale. Sorry just some musings on facebook ads from someone who's seen people do it wrong, and has made money on the network for myself and clients.
It's pragmatic, with the right intent, niche, offer, and funnel. Custom audiences greatly increase your chances as well, and massive retargeting with "users that aren't truly retargeted but you have their data" Probably not by throwing generic money at it and expecting magical high value users/sales.
P.S. Agreed! re: StumbleUpon is SO HOT for their ads. I wish their were more native advertising networks. StumbleUpon and Facebook are hot. Twitter seems to only work for certain niches with custom cards for optins but even then it seems it's over a dollar per click and generic web traffic or the plethora. StumbleUpon CPM seems to be some of the best ratios out there, and clicks are really cheap sub $1.
Comments
I found out this very early, a few years ago when their ad platform was barely launching for everyone. I had a digital magazine and overall it seemed like a good deal, send me people interested in music from these countries at very low CPCs, nice. In total, I may have spent around $1200 USD over a month for a little more than 100 subscribers; needless to say I felt scammed. When trying to figure out what happened (w/ Google Analytics, my own event tracking code and even a few apache logs) I found out very interesting stuff, like that 99% of those clicks were people who didn't stay for more than a second on my webpage, like in: they didn't even wait for the page to load completely... weird.
Just for the record, my ads were not clickbaity and were targeted fine, and my magazine didn't suck (IMO at least heh), so if someone clicked on my ad I would pretty much expect it to stay in the page and have at least a look at the cover of the current issue.
Why did I burn $1200 if the ads weren't working from the start? I wish I had figured that out earlier and spend that money on a fancy chair or whatever instead... The thing is that I was only looking at my daily visitors and believed that everything was fine, it was until the end of the month (where I always made some kind of audit thing to see if I was growing or not) where I noticed that the number of new subscribers had remained the same even though FB ads were active all time.
Since then, the only advice I give to friends and clients is "stay away from Facebook ads, it's not what you think they are". And on a small side note, I tried a lot of advertisers at that time and the best experience I had was with StumbleUpon, their referrals converted to subscribers at an incredible ratio (like >50%!!!) and on top of that they drove some extra organic growth even a few months after then campaign was finished, respect for them.
Fat finger effect? http://www.businessinsider.com/error-rate-for-mobile-ad-fat-...
There was also a post a while back here on HN about ridiculous Facebook click-through rates with the same kind of 1-second time-on-site stats. I forgot what the cause was.
There are a few bots & bot hunters out there, http://online.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023040263045794...
I've been acquiring SaaS users for <$10 for awhile now at around 50 cents a click. I find the ads extremely effective if you know what you're doing and target the right demographics. That being said, the conversion thing makes total sense. There's lots of little tricks that have worked like make a campaign with over $100/day on ads and you get prioritized over the little fish and then lower it right away so you're still prioritized in their display algo but you aren't spending at that amount. If your adspend really is 100 start it higher like 1000. Lots of little tricks you can do that will tweak the system to your advantages. but buy paying for likes or showing ads to people who like candy crush or "insert corporate page" you'll probably burn at over a dollar a click to your site and most of those will bounce hence leaving an ineffective campaign.
The thing is though even if it's slightly working it's probably cheaper then AdWords, so for larger budgets/non personal it's a great way to get the same amount and comparably the same targeted traffic for less capital.
Also if the ads are so horrendous please explain the numerous ad hackers that have done TeeSpring campaigns making 100k by targeting niche at scale. Sorry just some musings on facebook ads from someone who's seen people do it wrong, and has made money on the network for myself and clients.
It's pragmatic, with the right intent, niche, offer, and funnel. Custom audiences greatly increase your chances as well, and massive retargeting with "users that aren't truly retargeted but you have their data" Probably not by throwing generic money at it and expecting magical high value users/sales.
P.S. Agreed! re: StumbleUpon is SO HOT for their ads. I wish their were more native advertising networks. StumbleUpon and Facebook are hot. Twitter seems to only work for certain niches with custom cards for optins but even then it seems it's over a dollar per click and generic web traffic or the plethora. StumbleUpon CPM seems to be some of the best ratios out there, and clicks are really cheap sub $1.
"Lots of little tricks you can do that will tweak the system to your advantages."
Can you suggest any resources for these tricks?
This article is not about the ad platform... It talks about reach from the normal page posts of brands.