But this is the game. I've spent millions of dollars on G/FB/etc and that's just how it goes.
But this is the game. I've spent millions of dollars on G/FB/etc and that's just how it goes.
There are a ton to criticize about google's adplatform (from user data handling to transparency to semi-monopoly to ...) but at the end of day if I make a proper well targeted campaign I get matching results.
Not all of them and there are some obvious false in there (ergo the need for transparency), but for every company who I have personnaly done the adwords campaign, as long as I disable the display network and make sure the campaign is well made, I get my bang for the buck.
On the other hand I'm still not sure why anyone who isn't scam or retargeting advertises on facebook, its "leads" are absolutely terrible in quality. I'm the kind who is willing to spend lots of time and a/b testing on my campaign (since at the end of the day it's the source of my money), but no matter what I do it costs me between 3 and 20 times more on facebook than on google to get the same number of end game sales.
It's a terrible ad network. When I dabbled in adult toys sales a while back I had to deal with adult networks ads and even THEY were better. Honestly it's impressive to me how bad it is.
(ads are purely textual and non retargeted, real products or services with great reviews)
I'm saying if I have a buck to put, it's worth several times more on adwords than on fb.
If you are traffic starved then sure fb could be usefull but I suspect the vast majority of small/medium business runs out of ad budget before they run out of adwords growth capabilities, and they value qualified leads much more than raw traffic.
Again OF COURSE it varies by business and I'm sure other people have the opposite experience, but mine has been clear cut and I shared it.
> gave yourself a lot of credit as a marketer
I in no way intended to do that. If I did, I apologize. I may be bad, or good, or decent, or terrible at it, I don't know. The point I was trying to make on that part of my original comment was simply: I do spend time on my campaign and A/B test difference, not as-in "I'm great", but as-in "I didn' just make my first campaign there in 5 minutes without trying to improve it or learn from my mistakes" because I think anecdotal evidences given from that point of view have no value at all.
So again, sorry if that is indeed what can be understood in what I wrote because that would be egoistical and wrong, but I genuinely don't believe that's what I wrote.
I have never sold below 100$ product, I have for services but I was taking a loss for the first 6 months per customer to acquire a base.
My best performing campaign in an entirely different market (education) is for a 4000$ product/1 year service combo, cpa is at 150$ but basically one out of every 10 leads is a sale (cyclical depending on time of year so this is a "make bank for three month" thing).
It's a $70bn ad network. All that revenue comes from highly liquid ad budgets. It's naive to conclude that fb ads "don't work" from anecdote... Not working most of the time is the norm for advertising, but the scale comes from the cases where it does work.
Anyway... this is just not the case here. The advertisers that pour budgets into fb aren't suckers. They're highly roi-sensitive and data cognizant.
All advertising fails much of the time, but when it doesn't it scales.
How do you know? Facebook obviously carries ads from huge brands, but also has a very long tail of smaller businesses and other advertisers. While it's reasonable to assume that whoever is spending a few million here and there on behalf of some major retail enterprise is watching the numbers pretty closely, I see no reason to assume that a thousand small businesses who are spending a few thousand here and there are doing the same. It's also worth noting that several things Facebook has done in the past have prompted reports of Major Brand X pulling $Y million in ad spend, so apparently the people who do have the sophisticated ROI monitoring don't always like what they see.
I will be honest and say that the prefix was assumed to be understood without having to be written, but I understand how without it my statement could be seen as something else (and rather obviously wrong).
I've heard (no direct experience) that FB leads tend to be high-quality when one is advertising, e.g., mobile games monetized through in-game purchasing.
For references my own ads have been looking for leads (not traffic, not subscription/registration), and the areas have been education, IT services, home help services and niche market retail sales (aka low sales but of several thousands per unit products).
This smells like a lawsuit.
This is insane.
> They also restrict your account so you can't do anything, but they leave the ads running and keep billing you. This bankrupts people who can't pause their unprofitable campaigns.
This is insane too.
The vague reporting of likely spend/speed of showing ads has always scared me of putting a large budget on a single campaign upfront.
Why would you not just call your bank up, and get it charged back/refunded at that point? Thus Facebook would probably "ban" you (like most merchants when you do a chargeback), but since you're already restricted, who cares. At least you aren't losing money from them.
I recently had to open a support ticket with Paypal, they are exactly the same, unfortunately
I understand the incentives that led to this, but it's still crazy to think about it, since it's obviously a worse use of time for everyone (both me and their agents) just to get some metrics to go up
I think I had my account banned the last 3 times I created a new ad. None were against their policies. My account go reinstated each time but still.
I used to run FB ads for my brick and mortar ca. 2016-18 to the tune of about $1k/day at it's height (I know that's not a lot necessarily just providing context). I never had any issues at all, the experience was actually pretty great. But, I've heard similar stories to yours from a lot of people so I know it happened I'm just curious if it was a change in the last couple years or if I just got insanely lucky.
Locking away your backpack in a supermarket, bag inspections in the cinema, online tracking, and captchas. And good luck if you ever get annoyed at the barrage of unnecessary captchas and just click random stuff... You'll get shadowbanned.
Because nothing says "robot" more clearly than getting offended by useless interruptions.
Do whatever Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and the other big and hugely successful advertisers do. They have entire staffs to make sure their ads end up in the right places at the right prices.
See what your competitor is doing, and then do slightly better. Assuming you can afford it.