I totally ignored Facebook ads for the longest time. I admit, I’m a bit of a PPC snob and don’t jump on new trends. First off, I don’t use Facebook. In fact the site really annoys me. From what I read, even though some people seemed to be making good money, it’s a really sketchy system as far as ads running then getting shut down for no reason. I tend to focus on more long term strategies. Also even though you can target demographically, it is still contextual advertising, which will almost always lead to lower conversions. With search, people are actively looking for your product and are in full buy mode. While with contextual ads like Facebook, they just see your ad and it may or may not appeal to them.
So I look at advertising on Facebook type systems as a more speculative activity to be done in your spare time. All that being said, I finally gave it a shot for the last 3 days. My initial impressions of Facebook ads:
- The approval process is not easy to work with. I managed to get about 50% of my ads approved, which I guess is ok. But it was strange because with 2 almost identical ads, 1 would make it and 1 would be rejected.
- The interface is terrible. No bulk upload, no CSV import, no adgroups. It’s about as basic as it gets.
- The reporting is also really bad.
- The bid prices seem a little steep and keep creeping up on me. I assume that if your CTR for the ad is low, they keep jacking up the bid prices. This keeps happening on many of my ads with bids in the $1 range.
- The budget limits are ridiculously low. $200 a day?? If people want to spend money, why not let them.
- The traffic does convert though.
So how did I do with my first few days? Here are the numbers.
Day 1: Spend $28.54 Gross $98.77 Profit = $70.23
Day 2: Spend $101.75 Gross $116.34 Profit = $14.59
I got a little overly aggressive with higher bid prices which killed the profit margin.
Day 3: Spend $109.32 Gross $213.89 Profit = $104.57
Facebook does have promise, but I would like to see their system mature some more. It’s pretty labor intensive getting ads online and then keeping them running. An upload system or API would be great, as well as a real reporting system. Until then, I’ll throw my effort into Adcenter stuff which is really hot now. But, I’ll definitely be back to FB as time allows.
I would love to share my experiences but til now none of my ads were approved. That is annoying since you can’t reactivate them – no you have to write them again. Its strange to me and I am not quite sure how to get the ads working there, any ideas?
Yeah, I tried the FB ads, and know a few people that are making a killing off of them, but they really have no straightforward way of approving or disapproving of ads, and that pisses me off.
Thanks pretty awesome that, never having touching FB ads before, you were able to just jump in and profit from the start.
Really does show that AM skills are highly transferable between platforms.
cheers
Well to be honest, I did send the traffic to my best converting private lead-gen. I don’t know if it would have worked with just a random network CPA offer.
Facebook sucks. The ads that I did get approved didn’t convert at all. Bid prices are inflated. I got so pissed off at all of my ads not being approved that I made one about how facebook ads suck and was banned. I could create another account, but I don’t even think it is worth the hassle.
Thats really funny, creating a facebook sucks ad.
I tried FB ads about 3-4 months ago. Ran it for a couple of days with some generic CPA offer. Didn’t convert.
Funny thing is that I just got an email from FB last week stating that my ad was rejected. Never mind that it hasn’t been running for months!
Goes to show how with-it they are.
The time spent learning FaceBook in my opinion can be better spent adding more campaigns to REAL PPC systems such as AdWords, Yahoo and MSN. I have no clue why they make is so difficult to make ads run?? I am baffled at their review process. I made cash with them, but compared to Google and Yahoo I said screw it and just made more campaigns on Google that still run fine to this day. No B.S. or silly rejection emails.
I can understand Facebook’s need to have quality ads running on their system however they need to understand the advertising business a little better. They should get some pointers from Google??
Wake up FaceBook, you bunch of donkeys………
I predict they will come to their senses when they see their ad revenue decline dramatically after their recent (ridiculous) update to their advertising policies. From all the networks I am in contact with, every one of them has felt the decrease in revenue that facebook advertisers (affiliates) were bringing in to their network so if they all feel it that badly then FB has to be getting killed right now. Sadly, as is the case with any large company it will take them a few months to realize how much revenue they are losing before they make any changes.
I would be really pissed if I had put my own money into facebook ads and don’t get anything back because none of the ads were approved. Right now I am on the 6th try of one of my ad, that sucks. This time could be easily used somewhere else to make money.
I’ve noticed that offers tend to “die out” on FB. Early on, I ran some dating offers on there and did pretty well, but over time, they just died out. More and more clicks and falling conversions.
This is by far the best facebook ad I have come across.
http://img133.imageshack.us/img133/5300/fbadai1.gif
Chad, any chance you can give some insight into what sorts of offers/sites you were running with these ads?
Profit data is great to see and I’m glad its worked for you (who doesn’t like an extra $100/day) however without the context of the types of offers and such there isn’t very much actionable info there…
I understand you can’t give it all away, but any general info would be nice.
Pretty sure he told you as much as he is going to above when he said “I did send the traffic to my best converting private lead-gen”. Many things WORK on facebook but as stated in this post it is WORK, even more so now that they have cracked down and made their ad policies very strict. Go try things and see what WORKS for you.
Way to go with your FB Ads success. I just spent $250 and earned $85, but luckily that $250 was in free coupons. Now I’m trying to take what I learned and see if I can actually make some real money.
Sorry I can’t give any more tips, this post was just my first impressions of the system. If you guys want some good FB tips check out this blog. http://neilsweb.com/ Neil has a lot of great FB content on his blog.
you guys should check out nickycakes blog at http://www.nickycakes.com and illeats blog at http://www.illeat.com for some more facebook content too.
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