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!
Sorry that what the post remember you of. Was not the intention.
I'm the first to say that Facebook Ads don't work for everyone. And in advertising you should immediately stop spending on anything that don't have a positive ROI.
Still before stopping you should learn a bit how to use the platform and give it a fair try.
Then if it does not work ... stop it immediately and move on testing another channel :)
I don't, I've written in the post I envy them for the great outcome they had out of $50 spent in Fb Ads ... that's what marketing is all about, getting the most out of your time/money :)
This is partially true ... but still promoting a b2b service on FB is always tough ... I see many of our customers with b2c products getting crazy conversion rates and spending more and more.
Agreed but doesn't this apply to every Advertising platform? Are you going to get much better results if you spend $50 with no expertise on Google AdWords or display advertising ?
Would be really interesting to know how much the long tail account for :) But guess we'll never know!
For sure both Facebook and Google should do a better job training users with 0 expertise to better use their platform. I don't think in the long term they have much space to grow more in the enterprise, SMBs, the long tail are the segment where the future growth is ... and if they loose them after the first $50 it will be tough!
That's true but actually Facebook now try to charge for CPM not clicks so that soften the problem, and still, you should check your CPA ... if that makes sense some fake clicks are acceptable.
Thanks :) Yep ... I wrote it exactly out of frustration for reading post after post here on HN bashing Fb Ads because of Fake clicks ... people should stop caring about clicks and focus on real metrics. Then a platform may not be a good fit for you, but still you cannot know if you test with a $50 budget
"Facebook Ads Are OK, but supporting them on HN is great!" You have just followed suit and created backlinks, conversions, ad views, etc. Don't worry, we all do it! It's the cycle of internet flow these days.
I'm with you. There are far too many variables ranging from audience, timing, ad setup, money, etc to even begin measuring in any scenario. The million dollar per month investment may see a better conversion rate than the ten million dollar per month investment. There are just far too many variables at play.
While American Idol was becoming a thing, I acquired #1 ad placement on the keyword 'dance' for 2 cents per click through Adwords. I was getting 100,000 impressions an hour. For me, Adwords was the greatest thing known to humans. Then, I attacked more keywords for other sites. Horrid conversion/CTR. Just different sides of the spectrum. You win some, you lose some.
> How fake clicks that don't generate business results would improve Facebook reputation as an effective advertiser ?
In online advertising, there's a pretty big chasm between when people think is going on, and reality. Facebook has every incentive to increase their apparent standing in the online advertising business, and the fact that some of the traffic is bogus may not matter to anyone but a purist (or a client).
Consider that everyone in the business has some bogus traffic. Maybe the players feel they can compare statistics without bothering to find out how much is nonsense masquerading as business.
> Actually every time these posts comes out (once a week lately) Facebook reputation is hurt.
Yes, that's true, but a corporate strategy might be to simply say, "We're working on this problem", and hope no one pays too much attention to the actual level of effort.
