[jklinger410]

>They do charge based on CPM which is why they can continue charging you for serving higher and higher frequencies to the same audience.

They charge based on reach and will serve your ad to users as many times as they want until they illicit a reaction. There is some proprietary algo at work to determine how your spend gets distributed.

How do we know this? If my paid post gets a good response, it gets free impressions. If my paid post gets poor response, it gets few impressions and I get a warning about the post.

Facebook is incentivizing good content, and it's not charging you per impression. Impressions definitely come into play, but what is more important is users, frequency, and engagement. Unlike other platforms.

[jsonne]

I'm sorry but again no. Your rationale is due to organic sharing of the ad rather than some sort of weird reach charging. Again if they were charging by reach and I was hitting frequency 7 or something surely they couldn't keep charging because those people have already been reached correct?

I'm well aware of the Facebook's algorithm that prioritizes ads with a higher relevancy score (or rather the 3 categories of quality that they recently replaced relevancy score with). They punish bad ads by artificially raising CPMs and artificially lowering them for quality ads.

So once again, yes they are charging you by impression. They just also make a distinction between paid impressions and earned impressions. Eg someone shares your ad and their friends see it = earned impressions.

Here's a link where Facebook says they're explicitly charging you based on CPM or CPC: https://www.facebook.com/business/a/ad-bidding

Relevant quote: "Depending on the type of bid you choose, you only pay for clicks or impressions when you run ads. Your ads will be deployed evenly over time, and you'll never be charged over your budget."

[jklinger410]

I think there is something nuanced here about my point that you aren't addressing. I have served Facebook ads through both a secondary vendor and through their interface. I can tell you with 100% certainty that my ads through the second party vendor overdeliver impressions based on the response rate of the ad. Unless my ad is complete garbage, I always get more impressions than I have paid for.

That's right, I get free impressions if my ad (not boosted post) does better.

How else I know this is that their video completion rate when calculated by impression is absolutely abysmal compared to other platforms. This is why they don't address VCR in their own interface. They want the ability to serve your ad however they see fit until there are results.

Also, I can ask Facebook to charge me only for plays, and you even alluded to the fact that you can pay for engagement as well. This backs up my point that Facebook will serve your ad as many times as it wants until it finds the right user-ad fit.

That being the case, I go back to what I already said. Yes, impressions are very important here, but they are not exactly what you are paying for. You are paying for user reach and engagement.

"Your ads will be deployed evenly over time, and you'll never be charged over your budget"

But your ads are usually served more than you ordered. Unlike other platforms, where I only get exactly as many impressions as I pay for.

In a way it is similar to Adwords Quality Score for CPC.

[jsonne]

I think we're arguing semantics here. For context I also have bought FB natively and through a DSP for about 8 years. The phenomenon that you're referencing is what I was talking about with earned/organic impressions versus paid impressions. I assume you're buying fixed cpm on your secondary vendor? Again what is happening is people are sharing the ad or tagging people in the comment section. Those would be earned impressions and would increase your reach but that doesn't mean FB doesn't charge based on CPM. If I'm buying a magazine ad and someone showed that magazine ad to their friend that doesn't mean the magazine wouldn't still sell that ad slot on a CPM basis. I understand why it would seem they would charge on a different basis than CPM at first glance but I assure you that isn't the case. As for engagement and video views completion that's all well and good but that's an optimization option rather than a charging basis. By all means my job would be much simpler though if Facebook only charged me on a conversion basis though haha.

I suspect we're at an impasse but you really should reconsider your position and look at the nuance between earned/organic impressions you get from an ad and paid impressions. As an aside one thing we do agree on is the abysmal video completion rate.

[jklinger410]

I appreciate the conversation and will take another look into whether or not my raw impressions for my ads are getting mixed in with organic impression numbers.

[jsonne]

Appreciate the conversation as well, and if you find that I'm wrong please do tell me! Always open to learning.