Hacker News Reader

Comment by jrs235 | Hacker News Reader

Facebook isn't like the yellow pages, your viewers aren't hot and ready to buy or looking actively shopping. Ads on Facebook (while target-able) should be used for brand building and recognition. Don't expect immediate sales or active clicking. Purchase and spend with this in mind and weigh it against your marketing goals and strategy.

View on HN

Facebook allows you to choose to either pay for impressions or for clicks. If you choose to pay per click, then why exactly is it only for branding? If the user clicked your ad, then there's your intent. If he didn't, then you didn't pay anything anyway.

Why exactly is that everyone keep repeating that facebook ads are for branding, there's no intent, low CTR etc. When you opt to not pay when a user doesn't click anyway?

In the article he talks about an example of a person who payed $100 to sell a single book. But I just looked at Facebook, and it costs around $0.25 per click. That means that 400 people actually clicked on his ad and only 1 bought a book. That's not a low click-through-rate, that's a low people-interested-in-your-book-rate. How is that problem any different from Google?

Touche. I'm not entirely familiar with the options. In this case if you go the CTR route, then you could still possibly use it for branding purposes but still have the click through try to funnel a person into a sale... makes me wonder if there is click fraud going on. Anyways if people don't click on ads, then you might be able to game the CTR route.

That's true EXCEPT the unit doesn't lend itself to that style of advertising. The biggest ad unit you can by on Facebook is 110x90 pixels. Try selling a car in that space well.

It's a shame that this is set in stone, and that Facebook cannot do anything to change or improve this.

It's not set in stone. One of the reasons investors see growth in Facebook.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com