We stopped advertising on Facebook

http://vpj.svbtle.com/we-stopped-advertising-on-facebook

by vpj • 13 years ago

164 108 13 years ago

vpj.svbtle.com

joelrunyon2• 13 years ago

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 actually increased revenue. I'd rather put my money towards users who are searching for our products explicitly or building up our own email list that we can "reach" anytime we want.

The best results we got for FB were through adroll or perfect audience that were utilizing facebook retargeting.

[1] http://www.adroll.com/ [2] https://www.perfectaudience.com/

mattmanser2• 13 years ago

How can it be debatable? Either your sales increased, or they did not increase.

If your page views went up but your conversion rate dropped by the same amount, that would be worthless traffic.

This is an honest question as why should we believe anything you say if you're not even doing the basic maths? Did you measure anything?

mfringel• 13 years ago

There's also the possibility that uptake was insignificant enough to be indistinguishable from organic growth.

joelrunyon2• 13 years ago

I should clarify:

It was debatable whether or not it increased revenue enough to justify the costs (both time & monetary) involved. What it came down to was that it wasn't profitable enough to justify the opportunity costs of executing FB instead of other avenues.

AJ007• 13 years ago

The original link is quite embarrassing as well, "By the way, this may not be the case with advertising for Clicks to Website, Website Conversions, etc. - I don’t have experience with those."

I would assume these individuals know very little about advertising. This is unfortunate because it masks valid criticism about Facebook's platform.

The Facebook "game" is to purchase likes, and then use that as a base to target advertising. At minimum it acts as a filter so that your advertising is reaching people who are active Facebook users (they click like), if done correctly they are both active and have some passion for the topic they are "liking."

One of my friends is a consultant who has done extensive work with Facebook advertising and has to clean up accounts that are basically fucked because a previous employee/vendor/consultant purchased a bunch of un-targeted foreign likes. Once those off topic likes are purchased (someone in Pakistan "liking" Las Vegas) the subsequent ad campaign is ruined.

If you bother to measure your ROI you can make a logical choice as to whether Facebook makes any sense at all to advertise on. Perhaps the ROI is negative, but close to breaking even. You can then take a very tactical approach not just your Facebook campaign, but your site or app, to tailor to those Facebook visits, and get a positive ROI.

Some markets are so competitive, or peculiar, you just will not get a positive ROI. That is not a Facebook unique issue. It applies to all channels.

The discussion so far is one of, this makes me angry, and this doesn't make sense, completely devoid of a analytical approach to the issue. Whether or not I want to personally use Facebook is another matter.

samsolomon• 13 years ago

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.

the_watcher9• 13 years ago

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.

rhizome• 13 years ago

The upside is that I see very few sponsored posts in my timeline.

the_watcher9• 13 years ago

Don't worry about promoting from your page to your fans unless you see high repurchase value from that channel. If most of your fans are on your email list, definitely don't bother. Use lookalike audiences and unpublished page posts to try and acquire new customers from Facebook. It's really not a great channel for retention (in my experience), but it is fantastic for acquiring new customers.

pawelkomarnicki• 13 years ago

Nothing new to be honest — I figured out Facebook likes are useless when Facebook gave me 20€ or something like that for reaching first 100 likes; long story short — "likers" never actually did anything in my website, just liked it.

Peroni• 13 years ago

Exact same story here. Free £25 voucher for facebook advertising. Targeted a very specific niche in the London region. Got a few likes, the vast majority (more than 98%) were people way outside the demographic I targeted and it had zero impact on my click-throughs.

tlarkworthy• 13 years ago

I would not read too much into this. Whether FB is good for business depends on your business. I know a company who is scaling back everything but Facebook because all their business is done through facebook, with clear analytics showing the discovery of their product is foremost on FB.

FB, for some industries, has great targeting. Tech business, probably not so much.

PS they target demographics, not getting likes

raverbashing2• 13 years ago

"We stopped advertising on Facebook to get Facebook “likes”, because we felt that it was a giant fruitless scheme of making Facebook rich. "

Yes, if your only objective is to get Facebook likes don't do that.

And by the way they don't seem to get Facebook. Or Social Media Advertising.

But I hand to them that 'like' has become a random thing.

Fede_V• 13 years ago

Everyone I've ever seen who has talked about how much they 'get' Social Media Advertising has been a snake oil salesman.

raverbashing2• 13 years ago

Possible

However this is not about "getting" (and bragging) this is about "not getting"

But you're right, if the person is bragging this is usually a red flag.

It's like someone bragging about "How they know how to write stories with Word" or how they can totally "Do calculation with Excel"

regal• 13 years ago

Facebook may be targeting more traditional big brand advertisers than it is small business advertisers (who need ads to convert to sales in a much tighter window). e.g., the Coca-Cola commercial you see on TV probably doesn't make a single person get up out of his chair, go grab his car keys, and drive to the store and buy a Coke. Yet, over time, get exposed to enough of those ads, and when it's time to buy, your hand instinctively goes for the one your brain is bombarded with ads for all day.

Then again, Facebook ads give advertisers much less of an "in your face, brainwashing you against your will" impact than TV commercials do.

This might just be a case of a revenue model that simply doesn't fit the platform. It may be that Facebook is going to have to figure out another way to justify its high P/E ratio.

bluedino2• 13 years ago

> the Coca-Cola commercial you see on TV probably doesn't make a single person get up out of his chair, go grab his car keys, and drive to the store and buy a Coke.
> Yet, over time, get exposed to enough of those ads, and when it's time to buy, your hand instinctively goes for the one your brain is bombarded with ads for all day.

I don't really think that has anything to do with it. At work we having both Coke and Pepsi vending machines. Most people prefer the taste of one or the other, to the point where if a place only serves Coke and they prefer Pepsi, they won't order it. Not unlike beer in America (Bud Light vs Miller Lite, etc)

Soft drink choices come down to availability most of the time. Chances are if you are at an event such as a sports game or concert, they've already made the choice for you. Same goes for a restaurant, McDonald's has Coke and Taco Bell has Pepsi.

jonlucc• 13 years ago

I'm not so sure, at least on the beer front. I grew up in St. Louis, home of Budweiser. Everything in the city is named after one of the members or former members of the city, and just about every event in the city is sponsored by Anheuser-Busch (owner of Budweiser). I have since left the city, but if I'm looking for cheap, crappy beer that's available at any bar, I reach for a Bud-something-or-other.

mercer• 13 years ago

If that is true, why would these companies spend so much on advertising?

wpietri• 13 years ago

I don't really think [brand advertising] has anything to do with it. [...] Soft drink choices come down to availability most of the time.

Coca Coca spends about $3 billion a year on advertising. [1] I couldn't find a breakdown for how much is brand-building versus other goals, but I think we can agree it's a lot.

That suggests two hypotheses: A) People in charge of a $3 billion budget for an incredibly profitable and long-lived company know what they're doing, or B) An anonymous non-expert on the Internet has correctly realized that advertisers are just fooling themselves, and he (and everybody else) is above being manipulated by brand advertising.

No offense, but I'm going with A.

[1] http://www.ajc.com/news/business/coca-cola-spent-more-than-2...

vidarh• 13 years ago

If you think that the way you experience the taste of what you eat and drink is not influenced by advertising, think again.

coldpie• 13 years ago

Not unlike beer in America (Bud Light vs Miller Lite, etc)

Please don't insult American beer by reducing it down to the very bottom of the barrel.

babs4742• 13 years ago

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 likely to chose Coke than RC Cola.

You need to look at effect your "brand" advertising is having on your paid search conversion rates. The industry is trying to solve this with "attribution" schemes ie figure out which ads every converted person has seen. (shameless-plug) But my company, Optimine has a much cooler and simpler approach using incremental modeling.

Here is a white paper that I think does a decent job of explaining. http://optimine.com/assets/pdfs/Measuring_Cross_Channel_Valu...

toomuchtodo3• 13 years ago

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.

scottrafer• 13 years ago

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.

linux_devil3• 13 years ago

They were advertising on Facebook and were not buying likes.

elbear• 13 years ago

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?

Kiro2• 13 years ago

I think Facebook Ads to get likes are really good to get those first 100 or 1000 likes that make you look like a serious product. However, you should never expect that ad spend to generate any other value than that.

kayoone• 13 years ago

in that case you can just buy 10k chinese likes on ebay for a dime. They are worthless except increasing the counter.

Kiro2• 13 years ago

I've tried that but they disappear after a while. The ones you get from Facebook Ads are real people who will also normally like your posts etc.

jeremyjarvis• 13 years ago

The title is a bit "baity"/misleading. They were only advertising for Facebook "likes" - not clickthrus etc.

It should probably read, "We stopped advertising for likes on Facebook". To which we'd probably just nod or shrug.

ig1• 13 years ago

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).

the_watcher9• 13 years ago

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.

corobo2• 13 years ago

What features are unlocked? I only know of boost but that appears at 50 likes. I can't see anything different on my page with >1000.

exelius• 13 years ago

Likes for the sake of likes are meaningless. The value of the whole Like system is that it gives you some notion of brand reach and adoption. You undermine that with programs specifically designed to drive Likes.

Facebook encourages programs like this because they make money off of them. But they're a sucker's game; internet marketing is still internet marketing and people who are good at it know how to assess the value of an online marketing campaign with cold numerical efficiency.

Google's advertising system is still far superior to Facebook's because it's built in such a way that Google makes more money when their advertisers make more money. Facebook still has yet to find a way to show real ROI in the way that Google does. I think they will eventually, but right now their mantra is that social marketing is different than online marketing.

jrockway• 13 years ago

Back in the old days, businesses advertised in order to sell their product. Anyone still doing that?

JacobAldridge• 13 years ago

Back in the old days, businesses sold a product. Anyone still doing that?

mkr-hn• 13 years ago

Yes

toomuchtodo3• 13 years ago

Yes, but its all made in China. (Nothing wrong with that.)

charlie_vill• 13 years ago

In the expense of time I'll keep this short: Facebook likes are more important than you may considered. After working with online marketing we found out that Facebook suggest your likes to people in your networks. That means if you like a certain page, your friends are most likely going to be shown that like, hence increasing the possibility of them liking your page.

I myself have discovered many pages, articles and even bought products online based on what Facebook suggests I should like. Like the shoes I'm wearing now. It really does work even though there isn't an easy way to track it. Don't underestimate what a Like can do.

ankitoberoi• 13 years ago

I use FB advertising to generate leads for my retail education business. We use Adwords too.

CPL via FB is about $1 (we're in India) and the CPL via Adwords is about 80 cents. Conversions: FB is basically garbage, less than .5%, while Adwords does way better and gives a positive ROI.

I have used Adwords retargeting but not FB retargeting, has it been beneficial to anyone?

jrub• 13 years ago

Buying likes (beyond a certain point) anymore is largely an outdated methodology. Once you've got a significant number of likes for your Page on Facebook (which is kind of a case-by-case number, depending on your brand, business, demographic, etc) you don't need to focus as much as building an audience.

Facebook has released a wealth of tools via their advertising platform in the last 12 months that make serving ads to the users you want to reach a much easier prospect. You don't need a super-large 2 million user base Page in order to get the word about your product out. Granted, you do have to pay for distribution now, instead of a few years ago when it was free, but the tools that are available (ad units, targeting, etc) are vastly better than what was available 2-3 years ago.

So, the article is correct in it's denouncing the value of a "like" on FB, but that value was always due to drop. Having more fans early on in the days of Pages was the main indicator of the success that a brand was having on FB. Those days are long gone, and [FB] marketers have to be more intelligent and deliberate about their strategies, and they have to be willing to put their money where their mouth is.

babuskov• 13 years ago

I found that using FB advertising to promote your website or product works:

http://bigosaur.com/blog/28-facebook-ads-android-players

I would use it as a sales funnel, but anything beyond that would belong into "Brand Recognition" which is really impossible to measure anyway and only the biggest brands who target general population should do it.

linux_devil3• 13 years ago

There is a vast difference between number of likes and actual people talking about product(which matters) . In most cases followers on twitters and likes on facebook are some random user profile which can't correlate with your industry specific product and large number of such profiles look fake. I won't recommend concentrating on likes and followers but it's the engagement which actually matters .

linux_devil3• 13 years ago

We did a study among likes and retweets , http://www.beevolve.com/social-media-audience/ just in case if you are interested

unclebucknasty3• 13 years ago

When launching something new about mid-last year, I went back on my long-standing feeling that FB was esentially worthless for companies (I generally don't believe that people really care about busineses on FB).

So, I went ahead and created a page, whereupon FB immediately began pushing me to buy likes (as I call it) or promote my page (as they call it). It felt extraordinarily scammy, especially given that I would then have to pay even more to reach those same people later.

But, I pushed through and tried it. The results were abysmal. Less than 100 likes, very little engagement, and a couple of conversions. Probably cost me about $1K.

Now, it can be argued that it was our message, service, etc. But, this story repeats itself all too often. I think the value of an FB like is highly overrated, even for "validation" purposes. People are increasingly turning a deaf ear to what their friends like and/or what shows up in their feeds. In fact, the very proliferation of like activity that FB and other companies push has diminished the value of likes over time until they are now completely meaningless or nearly so.

e12e2• 13 years ago

I think the issue is more that facebook inflated likes by interfacing with companies, killing the "organic" likes at the same time. I no longer see most likes from my friends -- not because they've stopped like-ing things -- but because facebook is unreasonably throttling the activity stream for some reason. Why would I be friends with these people on facebook if I didn't want to see some of their activities -- or want them to see some of my activities? I don't get it.

unclebucknasty3• 13 years ago

Yeah, killing organic likes is part of it. When you promote the heck out of likes and what's like-able starts to be more dependent on who is willing to pay for them, then they naturally become less organic.

corobo2• 13 years ago

There must have been something off there.. my most recent Facebook campaign got just shy of 200 likes for a £15 (~$25) ad

unclebucknasty3• 13 years ago

I'd be interested in knowing what the average is.

netcan4• 13 years ago

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. They were then qualified to be consultants and go door to door to electricians or removalists who got a good ROI and eventually allowed the consultants to spend an extra $350 per month. Then they hired an in house 'PPC Specialist' who spend their week figuring out new ways to profitably send Google more money. A lot of the campaigns set up 5 years ago are still active. I worked as a consultant back in 2007 and most of the campaigns I set up are still running.

It took some time to figure out that Adwords works for dentists but not for burgers or detergents. That wasn't immediately obvious. Burgers and detergents were the big spenders of the advertising world and a platform that didn't work for them was a toy.

There were a lot of ultimately stupid campaigns started. Half the initial customers tried to get a better CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) by optimizing for a low click through rate, benefiting no one. Google killed this off by creating adrank. The other stupid advertisers were eventually outcompeted by those who could turn their click into revenue more efficiently.

My point here is that Google put a tool out there. It took time before users (advertisers) were good enough at using it to put pressure on the bids and bring up prices. Someone figured out how to sell car insurance. Comparison sites were created. They signed deals with insurance companies. Ecosystems developed.

Facebook ads aren't useless. They just work for some stuff. The advertisers just need time to figure out what works. If you are having a town fete and want parents with small children to know you have a petting zoo, Facebook ads will get you customers physically driving to you for cents. Incredible value.

Facebook is just impatient. They keep moving the posts in an attempt to find a formula rather than making good tools, leaving them out there and letting advertisers find the formulas.

the_watcher9• 13 years ago

"The keep moving the posts in an attempt to find a formula rather than making good tools."

I disagree. They have been rapidly improving their tools (which in the past were absolutely useless). The improvements are the main thing driving the change, and they are using what they hear from advertisers to inform their changes. The difference between Facebook and Google is that the intent piece of Google made building an ads product that is essentially native and noninvasive to the users much simpler than Facebook. The WSJ piece from recently spelled it out, but the leadership of Facebook only recently started thinking about putting its best people on the ads product.

notastartup2• 13 years ago

Overall, it's a sinking ship. People don't go checking out someone's profile looking to buy car insurance, people don't check the news status looking to read more about plumbing in the local hood. Hardly on Google's level imho. Facebook is used like a yearbook you check everyday but only a couple of pages in your interest. Unless they start watermarking profiles with ads it's hardly going to even get most people's attention even if it was plastered all over the page.

It's only a matter of time before they realize they can't beat google and the sad reality hits, they can't monetize. There's no way to monetize hundred millions of people around the world who don't have wallet or credit card. Likes is a good example of this. Even if people who use facebook have a credit card they are probably not in the buying mood. Friend tells me a product is good, one still uses Google to verify, unless he's a real bro and I trust his tastes. Likes is a good example of people 'paying' their useless attention which has no price. It's free anyone can give out 'likes' as many or as senselessly as they want. Instead of credit card, you get people's clicking action that supposedly builds you street cred but like this article highlights, it's mostly comprised of no significant value to the advertiser.

sandieman2• 13 years ago

People don't watch television to watch commercials.

People don't drive on the freeway to see billboards.

This argument that advertising must be like google "advertise people looking for things" is not the value Facebook is offering advertisers. It's offering something significantly different and in many ways bigger. "Advertise people when not looking for things"

netcan4• 13 years ago

First there is a business model to be had trying to sell car insurance to people while they're checking out someone's profile. Rather, there is a business model to be had trying to slowly change people's association with the brand trying to sell them insurance. It's not high CPC/CPM but Facebook have a lot of inventory and potentially good "demographic" data.

Second, a big part of being native is letting the right advertisers find you. This is what I mean about being patient. It may be hard to picture now, 10 years later but Google initially had the same problem. The real advertising budgets were looking to replace/augment their TV & poster campaigns. Advertisers were FMCGs (detergents, coca cola), cars, movies, etc. Local pilates instructors & 2 man shop insurance resellers didn't have advertising budgets. No one was searching for "what is the most refreshing drink?" so any ad for coca cola would be "non-ative" (BTW I really like this description here - thanks the_watcher).

BTW, buying is not a huge part of adwords. In fact, it's pretty hard to get a positive ROI on a "product" purchase campaign.

To give you an example, if you want to run a one off event that's good for parents with kids, Facebook is awesome. It would probably also work well for showing film trailers, showing stand up or theatre "trailers." etc.

ivanbrussik2• 13 years ago

I agree with a lot of this, and sure no one goes out looking for a plumber on Facebook but Faceboook advertising really does work. Tons of case studies show that it is extremely effective especially with CPCs < $.10 and such.

jfoster• 13 years ago

They can't monetize? They already are. I think your sentiment might apply, though. Due to the context of facebook, they probably won't be able to monetize at a Google-like scale.

The Facebook data is worth a lot, though. Google knows what you're looking for, and Facebook knows what you're already into. For best results, an advertising network would have both pieces of data.

nhangen• 13 years ago

The mistakes that FB are making have more to do with them going back on their word and constantly moving the goalposts.

First, you could easily get likes and share with them. Then, you had to essentially buy likes to speak to everyone. Now, you have to buy likes and then buy the right to speak to everyone.

It's not right, and it's a horrible experience, both as a user and an advertiser. When I like a page, it means I want to see everything they send me unless I click to hide it or content like it.

As an advertiser, the double taxation is brutally distasteful. Stock might be up, but I'm with the OP.

netcan4• 13 years ago

I think the problem is that by encouraging likes they changed the meaning of likes, and both the user and the advertiser ended up getting stiffed. The number of likes a page has is meaningless. They are just crappy and FB needs to move to something else.

But I agree with you. They encouraged advertisers to get likes by advertising and let them believe that is valuable. Then they devalued the likes (this happened almost naturally, people like too many things). So, they did screw their customers around.

martinshen• 13 years ago

I just checked out nearby.lk's Facebook page and it's no wonder that they weren't getting performance out of Facebook Ads.

Facebook Ads are amazing. Nothing else has come close for us both for direct conversion and likes. Likes are far cheaper to acquire and can be extremely performant if used in the right ways.

Facebook has a huge learning curve though. As with all things, if your FB page doesn't have "page/audience fit" before the ad campaign, it won't after the ad campaign either.

the_watcher9• 13 years ago

I've run millions of dollars worth of Facebook ad campaigns. "Like" campaigns are the equivalent of brand advertising, a world in which there are no directly measurable metrics, so advertisers judge their performance based on metrics like "Did your ad campaign increase awareness?". Also, surprisingly, the most effective way I found for actually acquiring likes cheaply was to run direct response campaigns focusing on clicks to website, offer claims, and website conversions. So we got the best of both worlds, cheap fan-getting, as well as DR conversions. Basically, what I found was that to get their desired result of "people who visit your website then like the page," it is much more effective and cheap to focus on driving them to your page.

methodin• 13 years ago

Real likes == money spent

Unless the customer was duped into spending (free trials)

sharkweek2• 13 years ago

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.

the_watcher9• 13 years ago

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).

sharkweek2• 13 years ago

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

the_watcher9• 13 years ago

"Their overall monetization plan with pages seems terribly short sighted."

The problem here is that promoted posts from your page isn't the best way to use Facebook. Use it occasionally, but Facebook is much more similar to TV or print advertising than search ads. Think about it: Google, you use keywords to judge intent. Facebook, you use demographic information to introduce yourself to those in the demographic you thrive in.

profgubler• 13 years ago

I have been saying this forever as well. As a marketer this is what I want, not the current ad units Facebook is selling. I think they could honestly destroy Google Adsense and dominate the display ad business. With their data and a Google like distribution of their ads they would be unstoppable.

lloyddobbler• 13 years ago

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).

guelo• 13 years ago

Facebook has trained a lot of people to be afraid of Like-ing anything, installing any apps, associating anything with Facebook, etc. It's like they're searching for every possible gold-laying goose and killing it.

cummerbund• 13 years ago

Promoted Likes have always made me nervous on FB. One of the Pages I help manage ran a Like campaign. The page is very niche specific and appeals to people living in a certain area. Even though the campaign was targeted, an abnormal (around half) amount of new Likes came from Bangladesh (not targeted, not even close to a target market). We complained but it didn't help. That was 2 years ago and I've seen similar stories since then. Haven't trusted this sort of campaign since that experience and would advise anyone to stay clear of it. Unless of course you want to get Likes for vanity. In that sense, this campaign will help populate your Page, but expect low quality "fans", which could hurt your reach and engagement levels and screw you over with Edgerank.

tednash• 13 years ago

From first hand experience I absolutely agree with this.

Using Facebook's own PPC channels we are getting fraudulent clicks and fake profiles come via Facebook as a legitimate cost.

'Fraudulent' being the most important word.

trustfundbaby• 13 years ago

PS: this is wrt to "likes" vs the facebook ad part of the post

Not to mention that Facebook has drastically throttled updates pushed from pages to a users timeline, making the whole concept pretty useless unless you pay them (I know, I know, capitalism at its finest).

About a year or two ago, each update that came from our page (auto update from an rss feed) would be seen by 100 - 300 people, now we're lucky if 30 people see an update, usually its more like 7 - 15.

Whats the point?

rudyrigot• 13 years ago

There is one use case where Facebook likes are useful, even critical: in online brand protection. Users that actively "like" your page to receive your news have been proven to "like" the page with your company's name that has the highest number of likes (in other words: the most liked page is perceived to be the official page). If there are other pages about your company created by third-parties, and that get enough likes to be mistaken for you, you definitely want to have more likes, to make sure to remain the page that is perceived as official, and keep using Facebook as an information channel.

ignostic• 13 years ago

I'm not surprised that the "get more likes" campaigns fail to generate positive ROI. If you goal is to get people to sign up on your site why not create ads that at least drive people to your site?

This is maybe the third or fourth post I've read along the same lines: a lot of people aren't seeing ROI and engagement. FB isn't right for everyone, but there ARE people making money on it. Aside from having the right product and service offerings that do work on FB, you need to make sure you have the right campaign with clear goals and smart targeting. Without auditing their targeting options I can't say whether they got any of this right, but their Facebook content and profile aren't really set up for a liking campaign's ROI either.

static332• 13 years ago

The author has described, which is pretty obvious for any enterprise that have used facebook advertising to gain followers. They do not convert, and even worse, they don't help spread the word. Unless you post a photo of lolCatz. But how exactly a serious profession like I am in (logistics) can keep posting lolz cats photos. ;)

As for Facebook for advertising your products i.e links to your product pages or website, the ROI is worse. But I keep using it however, because in my market, using Adwords is no more affordable, I roughly pay $0.03 for a Facebook ad click, while the same costs me $0.25 on adwords. That's why I had to give up on Adwords.

Mistone• 13 years ago

A few things to add, my background is in running direct response marketing campaigns for tech/web Co's. A few years back we did a small monthly ad spend via facebook, basically display ads with very cheap CPM's and even then pretty great demo targeting, but poor results. It was cheap and semi relevant so we continued on.

In the last 3-6 months many of the Co's I've been working with have greatly expanded their FB advertising with CPA's on par or better than Adwords Search. It's very important to separate branded and non branded search terms on Adwords when evaluating a campaign. Non branded is what matters for evaluating effectivess of Search campaigns.

FB has a huge advantage in demographic targeting. There are only so many relevant queries on Adwords and once you have covered your bases with relevant KW's, its hard to profitably scale past that stage. You can endlessly optimize but the gains are incremental.

I agree that buying likes on FB is not great, the exception is if your super targeted by demo and location, and then do friends of friends lead campaigns on top of the newly acquired likes, that can work, but it takes patience and a bit of budget.

FB's rising stock price is a direct result of their expanding share of advertising budgets.

crystaln• 13 years ago

TLDR: We were paying for likes on Facebook, even though we had no idea what they were or why we wanted them. We also haven't done any research on other ways to advertise on facebook because we assume that's the only way.

damaru• 13 years ago

Whatever nice algorithm or perfect code facebook could uses for the advertising the problem will always remain, people go on facebook to connect with other people, or to peep on people they don't know - that's its market share, nothing more and I don't think they can change that. It's a flawed model and I don't think it'll survive for long. It could have become a great protocole if it had been open since the start, but it'll probably have the same ending as... what was it, myPlace?

ivanbrussik2• 13 years ago

facebook also ditching sponsored stories as of apr 9

https://developers.facebook.com/roadmap/

Idothis2• 13 years ago

All this talk about facebook advertising not gener

Idothis2• 13 years ago

I don't see why people are complaining...facebook's job is to get your product/services in front of your would-be customers. It's your duty or the duty of your marketing department to brainstorm winning strategies to engage your audience.

dclara• 13 years ago

From business point of view, we want to push our ads to the users. So forget about buying "likes", but use "Clicks to Website, Website Conversions". Anybody has any successful story on that kind of ads on FB?

The targeted users become victim, though.

We stopped advertising on Facebook

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