
Facebook Ads: How to Get 1 Cent CPC (and why you might not want to) - garbowza
http://tech.momentgarden.com/post/5016551651/facebook-ads-how-to-get-1-cent-cpc-and-why-you-might
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jotto
this whole article is practically useless without data on how the incoming
traffic ultimately converted on momentgarden.com. (how many sales did you
generate from picture B over picture D?) just like eve online's a/b testing
that led to using pictures of attractive, loosely clothed women indicates you
can always increase click through rates by getting closer to porn. what good
are CTRs when your traffic is more interested in the picture they clicked than
the product you're selling?

~~~
garbowza
It's true that ultimately for our product, conversion into customers is what
matters in the end. But I don't think that makes this article useless.

Almost all businesses want to get people "through the door" to your website or
product, and our experiment shows how you can do that for a relatively low
price.

A logical follow on would focus on the landing page and conversion, but that
is beyond the scope of this original experiment, which was to show you the
mechanics of lowering your CPC.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
I think the parent is right: Businesses don't just want to get people through
the door, why attract people who will never buy anything at all, ever, and
moreover will drop their food wrappers, mess up the produce abuse your staff,
etc.. I think there are similarly toxic customers for online businesses
(though I'd guess they tend to waste less resources) - e.g. those who will use
things and return them for a refund even when they're not faulty.

Slightly aside, aren't the ads targeted to Pakistan cheaper because the ad
costs as a proportion of revenue per item are likely to be far higher if the
ads are simply charged as if for a company operating in a "richer" nation?
Isn't ad competition higher in richer nations?

To make it clearer - using the Big Mac index - Denmark comes in at $5 and
Malaysia at $1.50. I'd expect advertising costs to people in Malaysia to be at
least a third of those to people in Denmark (barring other over-bearing
factors).

~~~
garbowza
Definitely that's the reason the ads are cheaper in less developed and less
wealthy countries. It's simple supply & demand: obviously there are more
people targeting ads towards users in the U.S. and other wealthy countries.

We touched on a lot of this in the article, and in fact the title clause "(and
why you might not want to)" was referring specifically to that point!

That being said, there is a tremendous amount of useful techniques you can
learn from this approach, and you can choose apply those towards whatever
demographics you are marketing to.

It's up to each person to decide the specific goals of their ad campaigns, but
I'm hoping this article outlines some techniques that will help you achieve
those goals.

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jonathanjaeger
I run Facebook ads all day at my job and you're definitely going to have to
pay much more for ads in U.S. (over Canada or anywhere else). In addition,
starting your ads at a lower CPC will get you a lower quality score for your
ad -- so even if you get served initially, the life-span of your ad getting
served on Facebook will be much less. You will then have to reupload and start
spending at a higher CPC much quicker. Of course if you're a small business,
starting out at a much higher CPC (>$1) and running a lot of initial volume
might not be feasible for most people. You need to start out with greater than
.100% CTR if you want to have the ad sustain for a long period of time.
Running celebrity ads for a short period of time will work, but you could be
looking at C&D at some point if you're running a huge amount of volume.

Edit: At the end of the day CPC and CTR are useless if you can't drive enough
volume from the ads based on your targeting.

Edit 2: Targeting 30+ women will get you a higher landing page conversion and
CTR (obviously depends on the vertical, but in general).

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danielamitay
"And by cowbell, I mean clickable-ness. Examining the results of our first
round, and our research of what makes a photo clickable, we experimented with
a new version. This one took our best performing ad (Ad B) from round 1, and
zoomed in further to put more focus on the baby and the, ahem, clickable-
ness."

Best part. Great article, much appreciated. Reminded me of the infamous "gray
shirted girl": [http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2011/04/why-does-
face...](http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2011/04/why-does-facebo.php)

~~~
JonLim
That's exactly what I was thinking. I was hoping they would compare it to more
subtly sexy mother pictures, just to see if the celebrity effect actually
makes a bigger difference.

~~~
garbowza
The interesting thing is that the least recognizable celebrity (Isla Fisher)
ad performed the best. But examining the photos themselves, when combined with
what we learned about the things people click on, it became more obvious why
that was the case.

With more time and a bigger budget, we'd like to do further experiments to
determine what other aspects mother (or even father) photos draw clicks.

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lnanek
High clicks alone, even if they don't turn into customers, are worth something
in that you can bid less for advertising. Depending on the numbers, it may be
worth styling the ad and targeting the ad partly to include those high clicks
even if they aren't turning into customers. You'd still get to bid less than
if you just targeted for whoever is most likely to become customers. You'd
have to crunch the numbers to see if it is worth it, however.

~~~
garbowza
I definitely agree. It all comes down to user intent: Either you can try to
sell Facebook users on your product in the small ad space that they probably
end up ignoring, or you can get them to your site first and convert them into
customers once they are on your website.

Personally, I think the latter approach works better. Get lots of cheap clicks
to your site, and work on conversion when they are there. It's too hard to
create a convincing pitch for your product in the tiny real estate provided by
Facebook's ads, when the users' attention is already distracted by a lot of
other stuff going on.

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il
Really good post. Keyword/interest targeting on Facebook is a gold mine that
is completely ignored by 99% of advertisers.

Facebook Ads reminds me a lot of the early days of AdWords. Whoever was first
to bid on long tail keywords must have made a killing. You can be that person
in 2011 bidding on long tail keywords on social ads.

~~~
garbowza
Results seem to vary considerably depending on the market and keywords,
although it does seem that with some patience and experimentation you can find
that high value/low cost sweet spot.

They key is patience. I had tried Facebook Ads several times to no avail, but
after reading one of your blog posts as well as several others, I went back to
the drawing board until I started finding the variables that made it work. I'm
hoping this post expresses some of the lessons learned.

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nhangen
I had no idea that you could view demographic info of people that clicked your
ads. In fact, I was about to request it as a feature. Even after I read this,
it took me 5 minutes to figure out how to get there. Makes me wonder if they
buried it on purpose, or if it's another example of very poor FB UI.

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abbasmehdi
Great article, but I think your marketing message needs to be adjusted for
conversion a little, which will backward-waterfall into CTR and CPC. Your ad
is missing your value prop, it does not communicate what it will do that FB
does not do already. Secondly, since you're already talking to moms, so why
show moms more moms? If your message is privacy or continuity or whatever, why
not show an ad with someone that fits your physical bill having the problem
that you're trying to solve so you attract customers (who are having the
problem you're trying to solve).

BTW, the photos with high CTRs you describe will alienate family oriented
people - that is why very few businesses go there.

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orijing
> That way it can milk higher CTR from ads with CPC bids by putting them at
> the top of the same page, and still get just as much money from your CPM bid
> at the same time. That’s my theory, at least. Sneaky.

It's just the result of their auction, not intentionally sneaky. Ideally when
you choose CPM, you'd be allowed to specify different bids for different
positions, or at least be randomly inserted into the list since there's no way
for CPM bidders to specify their value for each position.

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ig1
While most of the points made are valid, the main reason they likely got cheap
CPC was targeting countries where there's little competition.

~~~
garbowza
Yep, that's essentially the moral of the post. While cheap clicks do exist,
and you can find them, you need to ask yourself whether it's really worth it
for your business.

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hncommenter13
Before you decide to copy these tactics, you might want to read up on the law
regarding using the name or likeness of another without their permission
(i.e., grabbing celebrity photos off the internet for your ad).

[http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/using-name-or-
likenes...](http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/using-name-or-likeness-
another)

~~~
Draft_Punk
I was wondering the same thing. How are they getting around using a
celebrity's image and likeness without permission?

Are they trying to make the "thumbnail" argument?

I'd really be interested to see how they got around this without paying for a
license....

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vgurgov
so for 1 cent you can get few clicks from Egypt and Pakistan.

nice.

you are just 2 steps away from becoming next internet {b/m}illioner. if only
you can:

1) attract millions them @ 1 cent price. screenshots shows just few clicks at
that price

2.1) find advertisers willing to pay >$10 cpm for these visitors

or

2.2) make them spend >1 cent on average.

