
Facebook Ads: The Cheapest Traffic You'll Ever Buy - ig1
http://blog.imranghory.org/facebook-ads-the-cheapest-traffic-youll-ever
======
blhack
Edit: the link that one of the commenters provided is a _lot_ more informative
(if you came here lookinf for a "how")

[http://www.dipoll.com/blog/2010/11/six-steps-to-run-cheap-
an...](http://www.dipoll.com/blog/2010/11/six-steps-to-run-cheap-and-
successful-facebook-advertising-campaigns/)

OP, if you're reading this, _how_ did you get such low CPC rates on facebook?

No offense, but this post just sortof sounds like bragging. What were you
targeting? What were you bids? What did your ad actually look like? What sort
of picture did you use (facebook ads require a picture, last I checked).

Etc. etc.

This is really interesting to me, because I've tried facebook ads before and
done _miserably_ with them. I was planning on doing some more reddit self-
serve advertising this week, but if you can get traffic from facebook for as
cheap as you're claiming, I would definitely give that a try instead.

This would be a really great post if you could share some of the research you
did.

~~~
pdenya
Thanks for posting that link, definitely much more informative than the
original post. I'm not sure if it was quite as shocking to everyone else but I
had previously written off facebook ads. I'll definitely be giving this a try.

And great timing too, I posted a question that this answers about an hour ago.
("How do I improve marketing without being a domain expert?"
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2408842>)

~~~
alain94040
Read again the data I shared here:
[http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2011/04/01/sell-your-google-
sto...](http://blog.fairsoftware.net/2011/04/01/sell-your-google-stock-like-
right-now-adwords-data/)

Facebook definitely works for me, despite the fact that my target audience is
not particularly fan of Facebook (just like HN ;-)

------
patio11
My Facebook ads experience in a nutshell: mega-targeted towards US women
interested in elementary education & etc, used a seasonally appropriate image
and tagline, spent $140, got 275 clicks (~$0.46), _four_ free trial signups
(pick email and password), and (unsurprisingly) no sales. $140 of AdWords
would typically get about 2.5k clicks and $300+ of sales.

This was a year ago. Every couple of months I wonder "Hmm, should I take
another whack at FB?" and then I decide to do something useful with my money
instead, like buying Frontierville dresses.

~~~
ig1
I feel silly asking you of all people this, but did you A/B test the targeting
and images used or were you picking them based upon what worked elsewhere ?

If you want to take another shot as trying out Facebook and want to have
someone look over your campaign, feel free to drop me an email.

~~~
patio11
That is a perfectly reasonable question. I didn't do any testing -- it was an
experimental campaign and totally flamed out. If it had been anywhere in the
general ballpark of feasible, I would happily have started iterating, but $35
CPA to the _free trial_ of a _thirty_ dollar product did not strike me as
something which was amenable to iterate-quickly-to-victory.

~~~
ig1
For both the Theory of Geek and CoderStack ad campaigns going from initial ad
to an optimized ad dropped eCPC by two orders of magnitude. Optimization has a
huge impact on Facebook Ads.

Although if you're paying $0.05/click for traffic on Google there's probably
less upside for you then someone who's paying $0.50/click on Google.

~~~
justinchen
I second that. Just changing the image will often swing CTRs wildly. One of
the great things about FB ads is that you can put an image (unlike google text
ads) and the audience responds very well to images.

------
spontaneus
There is a lot of click fraud in Facebook ads. Have you ever checked your
analytics logs to verify you are getting what you are paying for? In my case,
around 40% of clicks I paid for never made it over. I emailed facebook ad
support 6 times and the only response I ever received was from an auto
responder. I'd never use their service again.

~~~
ig1
I've not seen any sign of fraud, FB data matches up with my own analytics.

How are you doing analytics tracking ? - if you're using GA or something
similar then it could well be that the GA code isn't loading before the user
bounces. If you check your webserver logs that should give you an indication
if that's the case.

~~~
spontaneus
Yes, I used GA & getclicky and the results were almost identical. The landing
page I was using was extremely lightweight and loaded in less than a second in
most cases. I'd be really surprised if people could bounce before it loaded.

By the way, I'm not the only one reporting this issue:
[http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=facebook+...](http://www.google.com/#sclient=psy&hl=en&q=facebook+click+fraud&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=facebook+click+fraud&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=fd1a2cf87d4138e7)

~~~
ig1
I guess it depends on what your selling in the case of my comic click fraud
doesn't make sense, and for my job board the majority of my competitors buying
ads are major job boards.

If you're working in a more "black hat" corner of the ecommerce world like
affiliate links, it's certainly possible that click fraud occurs, I just
haven't seen it occurring.

Have you checked the analytics reports that Facebook generate to see if it is
the same users clicking the advert over-and-over again ?

------
vaksel
Once you take into account that Facebook traffic tends to start out at ~$1 a
click and the fact that the people clicking it are just browsing(instead of
searching like they do on Google)...you'll realize that Facebook traffic is
the most expensive traffic you can buy.

Most people who make money off craigslist are the affiliate spammers who get
paid something like $3 for every email submission form they get.

~~~
vaksel
just noticed that I said craigslist...I was talking about Facebook

------
e98cuenc
We also got better results from Facebook Ads than from AdSense. Something that
we found is that we got better results if we changed the image on the Ad
periodically and if we stopped for a while our campaigns.

We track the user by source, so we can check if the FB users are more or less
active than users from other Ad networks or from users that come from organic
search, and so far we have not observed a significant bias.

We are paying a few cents for each user _registration_ (not click). No other
Ad network comes close to these numbers for our site. Our budget is of some
(single digit) thousands dollars per month, and we have been running these Ads
for a few months.

~~~
wolfhumble
> We are paying a few cents for each user registration (not click).

How do you do that? I thought Facebook Ads only offers CPC (pay per click) and
CPM (per thousand impressions)?

~~~
e98cuenc
We use CPM. When the user registers we store their source (facebook Ad,
AdSense, organic, etc.), and we derive how much are we paying for each user,
as I said, a few cents for each user registration.

------
Osiris
I recently tried BuySellAds in an attempt to target ads a specific interest
group (technology websites). The result has been horrible. CTRs are like
0.001%. I'm getting about 30-50 clicks a day and with the same funds on
AdSense I'd be getting nearly a thousand clicks a day. It's too bad i sunk so
much into the experiment.

~~~
ig1
I hadn't looked at BuySellAds before, but looking at it now, I wouldn't buy
ads on any network that didn't let me filter by geography.

It's trivial for an ad network to implement geographic filtering, ads are
worth a lots less outside the handful of major economies, generally speaking
if an ad network doesn't do geotargeting it implies the ad network is trying
to sell you low value international traffic at US traffic prices.

------
thesis
I've gotten clicks that cost about .01. The whole idea is just to super
target. For instance, target users who are interested in runescape, use a
runescape image, use a ad text along the lines of "Love Runescape?" and some
creative ad text.

Then you want to split them all up into different ads for different
demographics.

My problem with facebook is CTR's will drop a lot over time... so you
constantly need to keep submitting fresh ads.

~~~
ig1
CTRs will definitely drop over time if you're super-targeting, it's a trade-
off you need to make.

FB don't offer frequency capping, so if your target demographic only has 5000
members then if you're showing 10,0000 ads/day then pretty soon everyone in
that demographic will have seen your ad and the CTR will drop. FB has some
decent reporting though for measuring ad saturation among your demographic.

------
ultrasaurus
What's the policy (and the actual enforcement) on using copyrightten content
as your picture? I'm not surprised Twilight imagery converts better than a
company logo, but it seems a little sketchy.

------
handzhiev
In my opinion and experience Facebook ads can work well only if you advertise
your fan page. Get people like it (obviously the fan page needs to be
interesting for this), then from time to time post stuff that advertises your
startup.

It's more work, but you can market to every fan many times instead of hoping
she will buy from you or give you her email address from the single visit the
ad would bring to your site.

------
ojilles
Cheapest CPC, maybe. But usually very low conversion rates on FB.

~~~
ig1
For Theory Of Geek most of my organic traffic is driven from social sites like
Twitter and Reddit, Facebook visitors are actually much more engaged (average
Reddit visitor views about 1.2 pages, average Facebook visitor 4.5 pages).

For CoderStack engagement (developers applying for jobs) roughly matches that
of long-tail organic search traffic.

~~~
ojilles
There is a huge difference between organic traffic and paid. The former has a
huge selection bias, by definition, for those visitors that are interested in
what you have to offer.

Ever tried doing a CPC campaign on Facebook for any of those sites? I'd bet
that the usage metrics would come out way differently.

~~~
ig1
That data is for advertising on Facebook

~~~
ojilles
Interesting... Misread your comment then. I'm working in e-Commerce in Europe,
and I see opposite results.

~~~
ig1
Are your ads clear about what you're selling?

------
joelrunyon
The biggest problem with FB ads of course, is having a product that is sale-
able to the facebook audience. I.e. entertainment/interest products, not
needs-based products

~~~
tomjen3
I don't buy that limitation. A tax accountant could properly make good money
around tax time with the right targeting.

The key is not to target too broad a group.

~~~
joelrunyon
I'd still say that's targeted based on "interest." Everyone needs tax work
around tax time. It's much harder to target say "people who need a new
furnace."

|The key is not to target too broad a group. <\-- That's the key in almost all
direct marketing.

------
direxorg
For most project it is not about clicks but about conversion and that is
greatly depends from the product that you are selling. Facebook is more "fun"
than "money spending" community. Google unrelated CPC keywords give 8X fold
better conversion than Facebook targeted ads from each click for me. Would be
more useful to have specific information on your numbers beside clicks.

~~~
ig1
See my comments elsewhere in this discussion:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2409001>

I'm not directly selling for either of my campaigns (although FB has
incidentally netted me a few sales for my job board; that's incidental rather
than intentional), so you could be right about people being hesitant to spend
money.

Although for CoderStack I do get plenty of people applying for jobs after
clicking on an ad, so it's not all fun.

I think a lot of it is about being careful about how you're tuning your ads,
it's easy to make an ad that people will click on that misleads the clicker as
to what your website will contain.

But if you start with an ad that's very specific about what you're delivering
and then tweak the other aspects (image, demographic targeting) then you can
probably get a healthy conversion rate.

(all my ads are clear about what you'll get if you click through)

------
DanBlake
The important thing every single article on HN always misses out is that
spending 100, 200 or even 5000$ is almost never a large enough pool to deduce
anything about a ad network. Put through a hundred million paid impressions
and then tell me what does and doesnt work.

~~~
ig1
I'll be the first to admit that the techniques that work for me may well not
work for someone running a million dollar ad campaign.

For most startups and SMEs (i.e the HN audience broadly speaking) that doesn't
matter, most of us are running ad budgets in the thousands rather than
millions.

