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Comment by downandout | Hacker News Reader

There is an enormous difference between a user that is searching for keywords related to your product, and potential customers that probably aren't looking for your product that you have identified through Facebook targeting criteria. The Google user has a problem and is actively seeking a solution; the Facebook user fits what you believe is the demographic profile of someone that might be interested in your product.

Traffic from Facebook ads is notoriously difficult to turn into cash precisely because of this. Most of their advertisers measure ROI in terms of shares and likes, not new users or product sales. Because Facebook has you bidding against such people for traffic, you will never be able to make the numbers back out because your competitors aren't measuring dollars or new users like you are. Advertising products/services on Facebook is a fool's errand for almost everyone, except for those with an extremely broad target audience.

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"The Google user has a problem and is actively seeking a solution; the Facebook user fits what you believe is the demographic profile of someone that might be interested in your product."

That's all well and good, but at the end of the day I can Google "Maserati Dealer" and yet have nowhere near the income levels required to purchase one.

"Traffic from Facebook ads is notoriously difficult to turn into cash precisely because of this. Most of their advertisers measure ROI in terms of shares and likes, not new users or product sales."

As someone that works in the industry this patently false. We measure Return on Investment in dollars not vanity metrics. ROAS is going to be your most common topline stat which is used (stand for return on ad spend with return meaning revenue).

"Advertising products/services on Facebook is a fool's errand for almost everyone, except for those with an extremely broad target audience."

Again very very wrong. In fact the most successful campaign I've ever run (3 million+ in revenue that was 300% ROI positive) was a relatively small niche market that was less than 200,000 people.

Now if you want the real reason Facebook seems to not work. It's a few things.

1. The people that raise their hand up to talk about Facebook ads do so because they're frustrated so all the things you read tend to be very polarized and negative.

2. Mostly amateurs are buying Facebook ads. Professionals routinely do much much better even in B2B niches.

3. Just because you're product didn't sell doesn't mean that the platform doesn't work. It routinely works for thousands of advertisers of all sizes every single day. I would encourage you to ask if it's the ad platform? Perhaps your ads? Perhaps your targeting? Perhaps your product just hasn't found product market fit yet.

You seem to be assuming that my comment was the result of some failed campaign. It wasn't.

Surely you would concede that your $3M campaign was a rarity and could not be duplicated in the case of most advertisers. About 30℅ of casino players walk out winners on any given day too - it doesn't mean they are going to beat the house long term. If you are advertising on a medium where useless metrics are the desired goal of your competitors (likes and shares in the case if Facebook), you cannot beat those people if you need a cash ROI and they don't. There are always going to be exceptions to the rule, and I'm glad you found one, but that doesn't invalidate anything I've said.

AdWords has demographic targeting and in-market segments, you can be slightly more targeted than broke people looking for Maserati's.

Agree with your general sentiment though, it's not necessarily a platform problem, the real problem may be expertise or a meh offer.

That's the essence of search vs. display advertising. You're right that the user's mindset is totally different when searching vs browsing but I think your conclusion about display ads not being worth it for direct online sales is wrong. People make money selling goods and services through FB ads. And many people are profitable with this (in the classical sense of "ROI"). Perhaps you're in a market where you found yourself bidding against people who don't measure direct monetary returns, and yes this is much more prevelant in display as opposed to search, but it's not that polarized in general. Your click through rate and conversion rate will be lower. Your cost-per-click will also be lower. Display works for direct advertising in many industries as long as you know how to target your market's interests.

Also fwiw I haven't seen the term "ROI" being used to describe non-monetary returns (clicks, likes, etc...), is that common now?

Re: ROI, I was just generally referring to the fact that many advertisers, large and small, deploy campaigns with the goal of gaining likes/shares etc. Brand advertisers count ROI this way, along with small businesses that have no other way to measure ROI other than with metrics such as likes, shares, and follows.

BTW, I am not the only person that feels this way about Facebook ads. I can't find the link atm but a study I read a year or so ago indicated that less than 6℅ of FB advertisers are showing a positive (cash) ROI.

That's not the case at all. In fact, advertising on facebook (at scale) requires very complex measurement with statistical models.

People need to understand that marketing (in this case advertising) is hard. Just because you can code or do something else and you are a generally smart doesn't mean you can figure out how to buy advertising after 20 hours and reading some blog posts straight from google's search results.

Dear god this. For most advertisers with a decent budget, measuring ROAS for FB on a last click basis across channels will lead to disappointment.

Unfortunately, developing a proper attribution model with post impression conversions (not just click based) is arguably the hardest challenge in the industry today. There is no one size fits all approach and even as someone who does this for a living and is well versed in the matter, I still haven't found a great approach. Incremental list testing isn't always easily done.

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