
Facebook Advertising Strategies for Early-Stage Startups - jamiequint
http://blog.interstateanalytics.com/2016/02/29/paid-user-acquisition-for-early-stage-startups-part-3-facebook-advertising-basics/
======
physcab
I also have similar experiences running ad budgets ($5M / month at highest). I
built tools to do ad optimization on FB using attribution as a backbone and
optimizing for ROI. I learned the hard truth with FB advertising when I built
my own iPhone app last summer and thought all this experience would help me.
Turns out when you're spending $2500 per day per campaign its easier to sit
back and optimize, but when you're spending $100 in a month its completely
different.

Turns out that the first thing you need to do is figure out if FB is the right
channel for you. I found out that on FB, anyone will download anything that
looks interesting and you can optimize your CPI fairly easily. But if you
count on people spending money via in app purchases, the typical rules (1%-5%
of active users) don't always apply for apps of different genres.

~~~
shostack
Would you mind sharing some technical detail on how you used attribution as a
backbone? What sort of modeling did you do around it? Just static attribution
models? Or did you get into the dynamic algorithmic side of things like the
big dedicated attribution platforms are doing?

~~~
physcab
Attribution on mobile is a commodity now. 5 years ago before AndroidID and
Apple IDFA, all you could use was IP, OS, Device Type, and random other bits
of info the network would send you. So you'd need some machine learning
inference to connect installed users to where they came from. Now, you just
literally match the device-ids with what you get in the click from network
partners (off-Facebook). Adjust, Appsflyer both do this.

On FB, just use FBSDK and it comes with its own attribution. They are starting
to shift to a "multi-touch" model where you don't really know how they
attribute -- its a black box that FB controls via their statistics. FB will
report what the CPI is to you. It sucks, but thats market dominance for you.

What I'm also saying is, make sure you're also sending revenue, logins, and
any other significant events to FB as well. Then you can figure out ROI and do
more performance marketing. This works at any scale.

~~~
shostack
Thanks. I should have clarified--attributing an app install on Android to the
source is definitely a solved problem. I was referring more to cross-channel
attribution and determining dynamic weighting across multiple touch points.

Sounds like FB is working towards obfuscating that and not giving granular
control which is disappointing to hear, but have you done any work around
custom weighting like that?

------
shostack
The bit about attribution is critical, but misses a more important basic piece
which is "make sure you setup and properly QA your conversion tracking."

So many companies launch FB ads without proper tracking and then are surprised
when they have no idea what it did for them. FB tends to group everything
under the sun as "engagement" and "conversions", so really digging in and
understanding those settings is key.

For example, 1-day view-through credit by default is probably a bad idea for
many advertisers, particularly when you have no clue what the quality of a
view-through is, and what they are worth to you. They are VERY different in
terms of value, but FB wants to give them 100% credit with their rules within
1-day. That's simply not how most savvy people approach attribution.

Google Analytics offers some great basic attribution tools out of the box that
let you experiment and compare different static models, or create your own
static model. Ultimately static models themselves have inherent limitations
because attribution is a much more dynamic thing that exists at the individual
user path level, but it is a great start.

~~~
callmeed
What are the best attribution tools for mobile (specifically iOS) campaigns?

~~~
jamiequint
Mobile install attribution is an entirely separate thing from marketing
attribution. As far as I am aware all the mobile attribution providers are
just attributing the last click that led to the install rather than giving
partial credit to each ad interaction prior to conversion. The list of common
providers there is generally: AppsFlyer, Kochava, Apsalar, Adjust, and Tune
(doesn't work with Facebook).

~~~
fbroder
Hi Jamie, I work at AppsFlyer. Indeed the attribution standard is by giving
credit to the last click. However, our dashboard provides more insights by
providing multi-touch attribution data, meaning assisted installs.

------
laurihy
Surprised that the article doesn't mention Website Custom Audiences (WCA in
short), which for many startups might be much easier to collect compared to
email addresses.

With WCAs you can build audiences based on people who visited your site (or
say, a specific URL like a blog post or a thank-you page). You can then use
these both for retargeting (e.g. someone visited your site but didn't sign up
yet), or build lookalike audiences out of website visitors and/or signups.
Imagine that someone read an amazing blog post describing some key features or
use cases of your product? Why not create a WCA and then craft a creative
addressing that specific audience segment.

Another benefit of WCAs and lookalikes based on those is, that they're updated
automatically, whereas for email-based custom audiences you'll either have to
manually upload new signups to FB, or set up some custom automation to do that
for you.

------
vincentbarr
Facebook is an effective acquisition channel for many verticals especially for
Gaming and E-commerce companies. For Mobile gaming, activation campaigns
benefit from Facebook's mobile reach, targeting and analytics. For e-commerce,
Dynamic Product Ads will generate the highest ROI among most paid marketing
activities (albeit at limited volume).

There is one huge catch, though: measurement and attribution.

Yes, setting view and click attribution windows on the platform is a given and
necessary, but this is only partly effective, unless Facebook is the only paid
marketing channel you're using.

If you're any running media on other networks or channels, then you need to
measure the their interactions and influence on the customer journey in order
to arrive at the incremental value of each channel and an attributed CAC
(customer acquisition cost).

Most attribution partners will allow you to do this and play nicely with all
of the networks/partners/channels, with one exception: Facebook.

Facebook is a 'walled garden' in that it does not allow third-party impression
tracking, unless you're using its attribution product, Atlas.

This means you are unable to effectively value and weigh the effect of
Facebook impressions, measure frequency and overlap across channels, conduct
accurate path analyses, and understand the incremental value of Facebook.

That said their ad products are sophisticated, best in social IMO, and their
roadmap is very promising.

~~~
cmadan
Facebook allows a few other third party tools for measurement/attribution
analysis. Ref [https://facebookmarketingpartners.com/marketing-
partners/#ad...](https://facebookmarketingpartners.com/marketing-
partners/#ad=&co%5B%5D=United+States+Of+America&in=&la=&qss=&sp%5B%5D=Measurement).

~~~
vincentbarr
No, they cannot provide measurement and attribution for campaigns that use
Website Custom Audiences or Lookalike audiences, which are often the two
largest, most valuable segments of any campaign. Atlas is the only provider
that can.

Also, this list points to mobile measurement companies.

------
jgalt212
I've been advised that advertising enterprise products (for US market) on
Facebook are a bad use of resources. Then we looked at Linked In, but their
pricing and targeting was disappointing.

What's the best platform to advertise enterprise software on? I think IP level
targeting is a good strategy, but curious to hear about other ideas.

~~~
callmeed
Don't advertise, do lead-generation & sales.

Read this: [http://www.amazon.com/Predictable-Revenue-Business-
Practices...](http://www.amazon.com/Predictable-Revenue-Business-Practices-
Salesforce-com/dp/0984380213/)

~~~
jamiequint
Advertising is a part of lead generation. Content marketing with paid
distribution is a valid strategy that is in use by a ton of SaaS companies
today operating on the Predictable Revenue model.

------
cm2012
One thing I would add is that you don't need a large list to make good
lookalikes off of - some of the best lookalikes were generated from only 5,000
emails.

Lookalikes almost always outperform interest targeting.

~~~
jamiequint
Past some point yes. I've seen a list of 5k work. I've also seen a list of 5k
fail miserably and get outperformed by interest audiences. I don't think its
accurate to say that interest audiences _never_ outperform lookalikes. At some
small scales they do.

Also there is a huge difference between a list of 5k emails that signed up and
5k emails that purchased in terms of performance.

~~~
jonathanjaeger
You can also combine lookalikes with interest targeting -- once some audience
gets saturated, mix a bunch of your past performing segments like a lookalike
+ interests.

------
aabajian
Wow. I didn't know you could upload a list of your customer's email addresses
to Facebook and have it build an audience of similar users. This seems highly
unethical -- who knows what FB will do with your customer's email addresses.

Edit: I also wonder what would happen if I uploaded just my own email address?
Would it find people very similar to me?

~~~
jamiequint
The data is hashed locally to get around personally identifiable information
(PII) issues:
[https://www.facebook.com/business/help/112061095610075](https://www.facebook.com/business/help/112061095610075)

------
dontscale
Great article

