[chintan]

>But I've never clicked on a Facebook ad and I don't know anyone who has unless it was research.

I often hear this on HN and from other techies. I bet you've never ran a serious Facebook or any other Ad campaign and measured effectiveness (in terms of business ROI).

I used to think like you, but they do work (even 0.05% click thru rate is considered effective!) and hence these companies make billions of dollars. Please stop making such ignorant statements. $3 billion revenue is not a small number.

[RobPfeifer]

In my experience, click-through rates aren't that great and conversion is really pretty bad. I've worked at 2 decent size ecommerce companies and the CPO hasn't ever really been profitable for social media ads especially compared to Google and Bing ads. Their advertising is really more comparable to traditional display or remarketing ads at this point which are generally less efficient for marketing spend and hence less profitable for FB's customers.