ASW Session: Advertising on Facebook
Jan 20th, 2009 by msdanielle
At Affiliate Summit West this January, I attended a few of the sessions that sparked my interest. One of the sessions I wanted to share entitled Advertising on Facebook on Day 2 of the conference. Panelists included Zac Johnson, Jeremy Schoemaker, and Alex Schultz of Facebook, with moderator Dan Murray of Ravenwood Marketing.
While topics included general discussions relating to findings, statistics, and testing, a couple pieces of information struck me that I wanted to share.
Actual Cost Per Click is Directly Related to Click Through Rate
Alex Schultz stated clearly that advertisers will pay a lower CPC in Facebook if they are able to boost their CTR. There is no mystical algorithm or “quality score” that advertisers need to achieve, like with Google AdWords. If you get users to click more often on your ad, your CPC will drop. This means testing various images, headlines and ad copy. If you’re wondering what a good CTR is, let’s just say that .03% is bad. If you’re able to achieve 1% then that wouldn’t be bad. (We all know “good” is subjective.) An average would be somewhere near .20-.25%.
However, since the Facebook system is still new, and the ad monitors are constantly pulling ads that either violate their TOS or are flagged as offensive, if you get an extremely high CTR, the ad will more likely undergo scrutiny. But they’re just making sure naughty ads have not infiltrated their system, and that it’s just a very enticing and effective advertisement that’s being displayed. In essense, don’t be surprised if your borderline shady ad that’s getting huge volume and high CTR suddenly gets pulled. You can always re-submit a similar ad until it gets approved.
There is a Massive Market Imbalance on Facebook – Take Advantage of It Now
Shoemoney made it clear that he still sees a massive market imbalance which favors advertisers. If there are campaigns that you’re thinking of testing, now is a great time to target your demographic and see if you can convert them.
The conclusion? Well, Alex stated that the Facebook ad system is still in its infancy. There are known issues, and many more features to come. However, it’s those marketers who take advantage of the system now (call them early adopters) while it’s still new that will reap the most benefit. Once the system is running smoothly, and a baby monkey can figure it out, the platform will be oversaturated with competition. So you have to submit the same ad 20 times to get approved? Whoever gets the ad up and running will get the clicks. Remember it’s a zero-sum game. If you’re not getting the clicks on Facebook, your competitor is.
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I was at that session too. The kept pounding it home that there was a TON of money to be made here because of the imbalance. I’ve been testing the waters with FB since I got back. Some interesting and exciting results…
The hardest and one of the most useful skills when advertising on facebook is trying to get people to add YOU as friend on facebook, as adding friends is a long winded process. A tip I would recommend is creating a PUBLIC profile with an atractive girl as a picture and have provocative “interests” and then a link to a PRIVATE profile and label the link as “view my over 18 pictures” and then sit back and watch as many mis-lead men add you as a friend.
Just found your blog via a link on Bryn Y.’s blog. Great stuff here! The facebook market inefficiency is totally crazy at the moment. If this keeps up for another year the same way i can retire!
A high “Ad disapproved” frequency is your friend. Persistence is paying off once you do get solid ads in there.
I agree on the latent potential in facebook ads. There is opportunity here that might be the very edge you were looking for. The how to is the operative question here though, and trial and error seems to be the only way forward at present.