Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by busterarm 2327 days ago
This is the same Facebook that inflated view numbers?

We ran Facebook ads when I was there and they just didn't convert at all. It was pissing money away. We got better engagement from posting on Twitter for free.

2 comments

Just a little anecdote. I've never purchased anything I've seen in an online ad except Facebook and Instagram.

Their targeting is so good that I almost don't mind seeing the ads.

Interesting. For me it's almost the opposite: if I see it on FB/Instagram, my first thought is it's a scam (and I'm often right).
If you click those scammy ads to see if they're a scam, Facebooks AI will see you are interested in them, and show you more scammy ads.
You don't even have to click it. Watch a Instagram ad to the end and they know you're interested and will show more of it.
Yes you're right
> Their targeting is so good that I almost don't mind seeing the ads.

Wouldn’t that make you more apprehensive of their ads? As it’d be more likely to lead to you parting ways with your money.

Parting ways with money is good. Money is the intermediary. You create value to get money. You part ways with money to realise other types of value on the other end.

If you accumulate a lot of money it means you have created lots of value but you haven't been able to use this intermediary to realise other types of value in exchange for the value that you created.

>This is the same Facebook that inflated view numbers?

You can't inflate conversions. View numbers are not that important if you're getting real sales results. Facebook is much better bang for buck in general. We run the same ads on both platforms all the time and it's not even close.

Our conversions from Facebook were also garbage. People would click through our ad and fill out a form even though the ad had nothing to do with them.