

 Facebook is destroying my business. What can I do? - datingapps
http://pastebin.com/1YQ8Swie

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tluyben2
We had this happen a few times with Google. Reading this brings back the
feelings I felt at that time; the feeling of being powerless to something
'unfair'. I guess everyone had that one time or another. The reasons why
things like this happen are debatable; maybe Google/FB has their reasons to
effectively ban companies giving them hundreds of thousands to millions of $ /
year (as these guys were and as we were). They are a commercial company and
they can decide that and they do decide that. What the infuriating thing is,
is the canned response communication. I cannot see that happen in many other
business contexts in the world; if you are a $100k or more per year client, it
seems totally _insane_ that you get treated like that (actually; I'm not sure
it's legal in some countries). The fact you cannot even call someone to just
tell you what's up if completely weird. And the reason we will never depend on
any 1 company for anything anymore.

This is smart advice always ofcourse, but, for instance, with adwords or
adsense, for a long time you really didn't have a choice ; the rest is/was
just garbage compared. Adwords has gone downhill a lot and this is good news
for Facebook, Bing and others. Adsense still pays most for a lot of niches so
a business just depending on ad sales will usually find it hard to diversify.

Now we used adwords for dating as well when Google just removed our ads for
various reasons they never told us about (they didn't ban the account, they
just told the ads would no longer run) and we did something which i'm not sure
will still work but maybe it's worth investigating; we went 'local'; we found
sites to advertise on and offline means in all parts of the country and got
ads there (cheap) which turned out very effective. Especially on smaller local
buy & sell sites / papers etc this returned far more than Google. A lot has
changed so i'm not sure if it helps you any, but that's what we did and our
profits jumped up with the added bonus that suddenly we had no dependency on
Google anymore.

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datingapps
Thanks, this is good insight and advice. I guess without Facebook our best
hope is to think outside the box...So frustrating because we wouldn't have
gone into this business had Facebook not been there - we counted on being able
to advertise our business on Facebook. After all, we're a legal business, we
don't try to pull shady tactics, just trying to build quality apps that people
enjoy using. I would have never thought that being prevented from advertising
on Facebook would be what will kill us.

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aTMoZFeaR
Try posting ads on Craigslist or Kijiji, that might help too.

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mschaecher
Are you managing your FB ads in house or via agency?

It sounds like in house, which I always highly recommend is best.

However, you might consider reaching out to one of the big FB ad partners like
Nanigans. $100k+ account with known ROI, which means you'll ramp quick and
advertise long term, will definitely get people drooling at those firms.

Because here's the issue:

While your situation is unfair, and your even allocation idea is great for the
most part, it doesn't take into account the size of your competitor's ad
budgets.

I'd be willing to bet Zoosk is somewhere in the range of $2M-$10M per year, or
more, just on facebook alone. Probably similar amount on Google too.

At that level of spend, the executive level access and ad partner
relationships on any advertising platform is a completely different world than
yours.

I bet the head of marketing at Zoosk has Sheryl Sandberg's number in their
phone and could get her on the line pretty much 24/7 if they REALLY needed
too.

You're advocating with a dog whistle, while they have bull horns.

But the big ad platform partners have bull horns too.

And while obviously no one there is calling Sheryl on your behalf, even their
regular day to day contacts at facebook are going to be way more influential
than yours.

So it may be possible to piggyback off of them to get higher up the ladder.

If they can do that, just run through them until your big enough to have your
own bull horn.

If they can't do anything for you because you're too small, you could try
reaching out to other niche or regional dating advertisers that got the axe
too(pry a ton that are pure desktop still too so even better).

Find ones with only a comfortable level of overlap to you guys and join up to
bring all your individual accounts to the first platform that gets you
unblocked.

Anyways, sucks and I feel ya, but hopefully some of that is useful.

PS - The 10% even allocation model you outlined is obviously ideal because it
lets the market sort it out. But you also have to think about what that market
mechanism would do to your business – a slower death. Big players can spend
more and afford higher CPIs. They could just take all the oxygen out of the
market for others until you die off.

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datingapps
We've tried both in house and via agency (Fiksu). They've just relayed the
message back to us that dating ads are now restricted. We will try reaching
out to Nanigans, thanks for the tip.

I agree with you about the larger advertisers with the bull horns - but this
isn't some local TV station - Facebook spent the last 5+ years building out a
sophisticated self-serve ad platform for this very reason, which has been
wildly successful for them. Have they lost all confidence in their ability for
their platform to filter out racy boob pictures and the advertisers who push
the envelope?

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bradhe
Man, this really demonstrates the level to which the "major advertisers"
(Google, Facebook, and friends) actually control the internet--the ecosystem
is incredible! It also indicates how much it sucks to base your business on
someone else's business. I had a friends company end up in a similar spot
after Google started crackin' down on farming AdSense links.

The best possible thing you could do would be to find an alternate advertising
model. That is, however, likely impossible for you at this point.

All I can say is good luck--interested in seeing what others have to say!

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bruceb
This is the first time I have read of an advertiser who saying their business
is dependent on fb. Usually it is Google cut us off or lowered us in the
results thereby killing our business. Maybe fb should highlight this story
next time one of the many fb ROI sucks/fake followers stories comes up.

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datingapps
Indeed, I never thought I'd be authoring a post like this, but I really think
dating is one area where Facebook holds a monopoly like grip

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UnethicalHacks
There was a post some time ago about a fast food delivery company using porn
sites to generate leads. it's certainly not glamorous but you might wanna try
that. i'm seeing pretty low CPMs.

~~~
datingapps
Yes, I've seen this post, and we've experimented there too, but we didn't get
results on par with what we saw with Facebook. Hard to do targeting there as
well beyond locale.

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mcv
If you've got that much money lying ready, why aren't you already hiring a
lawyer to address this with whatever passes for a competition authority in the
US?

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yuhong
This is probably OT, but I certainly don't like that people have to post
things like this anonymously

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datingapps
Not OT. I wish I didn't have to either. I know many at FB read HN, and I don't
want to make a bad situation even worse by getting singled out for blowing the
whistle on this clearly unfair (and possibly illegal) situation.

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turtle4
The situation sucks for you, but there isn't anything remotely illegal about
it, and it really isn't a matter of being unfair. They don't have a monopoly
on online advertising, and they are free to make whatever business deals they
want. Dating ads can be shady. They consider it less hassle for them to work
with known entities for a premium price than try to work with every site out
there. That's not a matter of fairness, it's just business.

It just sucks to be in the position you are with essentially no leverage in
the relationship, and dependence on a single source of advertising. I think
the other comments offer some insights on how to try to diversify. I don't
think you have a real alternative beyond that.

Good luck!

~~~
datingapps
Thanks.

Would it still be legal if there was evidence that they had deals with Zoosk
and Match.com to keep smaller advertisers off their platform?

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ams6110
When you swim in the muck, don't be surprised when you're treated like scum.

