Just wondering, is anyone happy with FB ad/recommendation tools? Cause a friend in the ad business was telling that FB ad never perform and she stoped.
I currently buy about 50k worth of ads every month, aiming for qualified leads (my end goal is converted sale, no recurring).
FB is one of the worst ad network I've had the displeasure to use.
First in terms of analytics and reporting. Adwords plays the "AWS billing card", they're transparent without being so, and the overabondance of unrelated metrics makes it sometime difficult to figure out where you are wasting cash. Still, it appears to be working hand in hand with me, they would like me to overpay what I need, but they also want it to make me money so I come back for more. They're my own personnal crack dealer. Facebook on the other hand really feel like a casino experience. It's basically telling you "it's working ! you should be pleased with the result !" and in general doesn't feel like a pleasant relationship to me. Doesn't surprise me in the least that they were caught many times faking numbers because that's the general vibe it gives off.
Second in terms of results. Talking to other people in the field it appears to perform decently for retargeting, or to grab a mass volume traffic/eyeballs. And they make lots of billions so clearly there is value to get there. But for high value qualified leads, FB is basically the same as Adwords "display network", which is already known as the crappy terrible part of adwords you should probably not use. Doesn't really surprise me, on Google/Amazon/Bing you're appearing in front of someone who typed "amazon I need a water pump" or "google I need a pdf editor", you're answering the user's question. Whereas on FB just like display network you just appear on content or for users that are vaguely related, you're bothering the user more than anything.
Like everything Ads it depends on your product and your market and how much time you can spend on it, but for me it's a massive dud.
Again, everything written here is my own experience and preference, I might be using it wrong, YMMV, lots of people make lots of money of it and all that.
> Doesn't surprise me in the least that they were caught many times faking numbers because that's the general vibe it gives off.
Long ago I made a Facebook page for something trivial I no longer care about. Facebook regularly reminds me that I should buy some ads to make the page more visible. Facebook also regularly tells me that someone was viewing my page... and by coincidence, it always happens when I am online. That is, I only open Facebook once per day, at different time on different days, and after five minutes of using it I get a message "someone just viewed your page".
From my perspective, this is quite stupid. If you ask for money and all I have is your word that you actually did something for me... it is bad strategy to introduce yourself as a liar. But I assume they did some A/B testing and most customers are gullible.
Another reason I would never buy Facebook ads is that it keeps showing me the same two ads every day, for years. So I would assume they would do exactly the same with my ads... like, I would pay for "10000 impressions" and all I would get is 10 unlucky people who get shown the ad 1000 times each.
You're probably well aware but most of those places will try to give you free credit to "start off", keeping the crack dealer reference going. It's never enough to really figure things out but it's still a good deal to take.
Know your product ! Figure out if you want traffic or subscription (are you willing to take a signup loss for long term gain ?) or leads and how qualified.
When you use adwords, they keep offering you to talk to a google representative every couple of month, to review your account and make suggestions. I found those a massive waste of my time when I had a campaign going well, but when I had trouble launching something new they were often a very decent (and free !) help. Make sure to use that and ask any questions you may have then.
Like I said they want to extract as much $ from you as they can, but they clearly know they need you to make money from it too. It's a love / hate relationship, but it works for me.
We spend about $100k a month on Google and Bing ads and we tried FB about a year and a half ago. It was a complete failure. FB's system was telling us that we had more conversions than we had business. We stopped FB ads cold and nothing changed in terms of revenue. I'm sure it works for some categories of ads, but for us it was a complete fraud and waste of money.
I have a friend who works on ads for video games mostly. Their company uses Google and Facebook for the majority of those spend, which one has better value for money tends to change every time I ask them. They definitely made FB ads work well for them for many years.
In addition, I’ve noticed people here commonly tell stories about how X’s ads never work work. I find it ridiculous. All of those digital ads definitely work for many companies, even if they don’t work at all for others. Ads is a competitive market. If your ads don’t work, it doesn’t say much about the platform, and may say more about your ads/product.
(Disclaimer: FB employee, but I don’t deal with ads)
FB is one of the worst ad network I've had the displeasure to use.
First in terms of analytics and reporting. Adwords plays the "AWS billing card", they're transparent without being so, and the overabondance of unrelated metrics makes it sometime difficult to figure out where you are wasting cash. Still, it appears to be working hand in hand with me, they would like me to overpay what I need, but they also want it to make me money so I come back for more. They're my own personnal crack dealer. Facebook on the other hand really feel like a casino experience. It's basically telling you "it's working ! you should be pleased with the result !" and in general doesn't feel like a pleasant relationship to me. Doesn't surprise me in the least that they were caught many times faking numbers because that's the general vibe it gives off.
Second in terms of results. Talking to other people in the field it appears to perform decently for retargeting, or to grab a mass volume traffic/eyeballs. And they make lots of billions so clearly there is value to get there. But for high value qualified leads, FB is basically the same as Adwords "display network", which is already known as the crappy terrible part of adwords you should probably not use. Doesn't really surprise me, on Google/Amazon/Bing you're appearing in front of someone who typed "amazon I need a water pump" or "google I need a pdf editor", you're answering the user's question. Whereas on FB just like display network you just appear on content or for users that are vaguely related, you're bothering the user more than anything.
Like everything Ads it depends on your product and your market and how much time you can spend on it, but for me it's a massive dud.
Again, everything written here is my own experience and preference, I might be using it wrong, YMMV, lots of people make lots of money of it and all that.