| Interesting post and you are spot on with this from a high-level. For advanced digital marketers, the next step of course is looking beyond last click data. The attribution model you view your data through plays just as large a role in determining the success of it as many of the other factors that this article and others focus on. Since you have conversion tracking setup for FB, FB conversions will obviously be higher than what GA shows in its standard reporting since FB's own conversion data is the equivalent of awarding 100% attribution to all assisted click conversions. What would be more interesting is to see how this stacks up along with your other channels with various attribution models. For those that are wondering if FB is working for you and looking at last click conversion metrics, you're doing it wrong. For a large % of scenarios, Facebook tends to play a much bigger role at the beginning of the conversion funnel, ie. the "Awareness" stage. This is also true of many forms of display advertising. To expect it to perform strongly on a last click model is unwise. First click models are likewise not great, but even that stark comparison will give you a sense of the contribution, and the GA multi-channel reports can show you that overlap. I'm constantly blown away by how many amazing attribution tools Google gives away in the free version of GA and I'm always disappointed that none of the marketing articles that hit HN focus on that piece of the puzzle. |
Totally agree that overall Facebook Ads is great for demand generation while Google Adwords is much better for demand fulfillment. Also you're right on the attribution model, Facebook clearly attribute to itself every conversion from people who clicked the ad no matter of the last click.
In the future I'll try to make a followup post playing with GA various attribution models and checking how they change the data!