Ad HustlerConfessions Of A Serial Internet Entrepreneur

You may or may not know about Facebook’s recent email regarding calling out user attributes in ads on the Facebook Ad system.  Last week they sent out this email:

Hi,

Ad quality and user feedback are extremely important to Facebook. We’ve received significant negative feedback about ads that call out users’ personally identifiable information, especially when the information is not directly relevant to the ad’s offer. We take this feedback very seriously and are taking an active role in removing ads that are detrimental to the user experience. Some of your ads have been disabled for this reason.

Please delete any ads using this tactic that may still be running and do not submit new ads that call our user attributes unnecessarily and that are not directly relevant to the offer (including, but not limited to, age, gender, location or interest). This practice is prohibited by Facebook’s Ad Guidelines (http://www.facebook.com/ad_guidelines.php). Advertisers who continually engage in advertising practices that generate strong negative feedback will find that their ads are less likely to be shown to users and may have their ads disabled or face account penalties up to and including the permanent loss of advertising privileges.

We appreciate your understanding,

The Facebook Ads Team

I already knew the email was coming because I saw a DM Confidential writeup about the new policy.  Here are my thoughts:

Although I can’t usually side with Facebook about ANYTHING, I think the move makes sense.  Calling out user attributes to try to make an untargeted ad seem very targeted can work for a while.  The problem is that users just become blind to it anyway.  You can only click an ad so many times because you think its some super special offer before you realize its nothing more than a generic ad using your profile information to target you.

Facebook Ads are incredibly powerful.  There are probably no other ad systems available with the amount of users and demographic information that Facebook has.  For Facebook to keep trust with it’s users they can’t let the users think their information is being sold off to the highest bidder.  Relevant ads based on interest are one thing, but blatantly using the Facebook users profile information to serve irrelevant ads that seem relevant are is just going to irk the user over time.

I know a lot of people are pissed about the new rule.  I think you should turn your frown upside down.  Think of it as a good thing.  Figure out how to use the system to target more relevantly.  You’ll end up with cheaper traffic and better conversions anyway.

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A lot of businesses start Facebook Pages in order to keep Facebook Users (Fans) connected to their brand.  What they don’t realize is that fans of your page aren’t getting your updates.

What?  Who?  Why?  Huh?

That’s right.  A large percentage of your fans probably are NOT getting your updates, making Facebook as a point of contact pretty useless for businesses using Facebook Pages.

How I Discovered This

I created a Facebook Page just to play around with it’s features.  I set the page up and joined it myself on my personal account.  I updated the page and went to my news feed to see if it was showing up like you would assume it would.  It didn’t!  This lead me on a bit of a wild goose chase trying to figure out why (and yes, i wasted way too much time on this).

Troubleshooting

I asked a few friends to become a fan of the page to see if they were getting the updates.  They weren’t.  I did some research to confirm that Facebook Page Updates show up in the news feed and indeed they do.

Next I used the Facebook App on my iPhone.  I took a look at the news feed and my Page Update was there.

Next I went into settings to make sure that I wasn’t blocking page updates or some nonsense like that.  I wasn’t.

The Issue

If you scroll to the bottom of your news feed you will see a link that says “Edit Options.”  If you click it you will see the people that you’ve manually hidden from your news feed as well as some other options.  One of the options is “Maximum number of friends shown in Live Feed.”  That option is defaulted to 250.  If you change that option to a number higher then the amount of friends you have, you now magically see the Page Updates.

This Makes No Sense

The reason businesses have Fan Pages is to connect with their fans.  The reason Facebook users become a Fan of a page is to get their updates.  Both parties are in mutual agreement about the relationship yet Facebook limits that relationship by default.  If someone wants to become a Fan of something they should be shown that Pages updates UNLESS they either Hide the updates or stop being a fan.  Why would you make someone jump through hoops just to achieve the relationship they desired in the first place?  Not everyone has more than 250 friends.  Those people will see the updates without a problem.  However, many people DO have more than 250 friends and those people probably won’t even know there is a setting limiting the amount of friends they are seeing in their feed.  As Facebook continues to grow this will become more and more of a problem.

I’m sure that there is some sort of algorithm at play here that assigns more of a weight to certain pages/friends based on levels of engagement.  Knowing this it still makes no sense.  People become fans to receive updates.  End of story.

The Facebook Deception

Facebook urges businesses to use Facebook Ads to grow their fan base.  They are encouraging businesses to spend money using THEIR ads to promote a page on THEIR platform yet when people become a fan of that page, they don’t necessarily get the updates.  Businesses are paying for the ability to engage with their fans yet can’t actually engage with them if the fan has more than 250 friends.  How does this make sense?

Have you found a way around this?
Have you run into this problem?
Do you have a fan page and didnt even know that users weren’t getting your updates?

Let’s discuss in the comments!

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I got this press release today in my email and found it pretty interesting.  Figured I’d Share:

Today we announced that AdMob has signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Google for $750 million. We are extremely excited about this new partnership and what it means for our advertiser, developer and publisher partners.

AdMob’s people, products and tools will continue to work to deliver successful campaigns for you and to effectively monetize your mobile traffic – no interruptions.  Our product and engineering teams will keep building great products for our customers. Our sales team will keep working with our thousands of advertisers to deliver successful campaigns. Our business development team will keep working to maximize ad revenue for the more than 15,000 mobile Web sites and applications that make up AdMob’s publisher network.

After our deal closes, AdMob will work with Google to accelerate the pace of innovation in mobile and do an even better job for you. We believe this deal will benefit our advertisers, developers and publishers by:

*Increasing our investment in building innovative and engaging ad units across platforms and to further improve targeting and tracking.

*Building even more powerful relevance and optimization capabilities, and more powerful technology and tools to monetize mobile traffic.

*Increasing the effectiveness of display advertising on mobile devices by leveraging Google sales team, infrastructure and relationships.

*Improving the already high level of service and support we deliver to our advertisers, developers and publishers.

You can read more about this deal at www.admob.com/google.

This is NOT a Paid Review

“Trust Agents” is written by Chris Brogan & Julien Smith.  Both of these guys are social media veterans who have ran the conference circuit as speakers.  Typically, guys with bios like that would bore the hell out of me as that description lends to guys who have big heads, are blowhards and don’t actually practice what they preach.  Chris & Julien however, have written a compelling book about the mechanics of developing trust on the web.

The process of becoming a trusted authority on a topic is not an accident.  It can be broken down into a series of actions that can be repeated for results every time.  “Trust Agents” describes these steps so that you can take your own actions and become a Trust Agent.  In my opinion this book can benefit two types of people:

Someone Who Wants To Be A Trusted Authority Within Their Niche

Let’s face it.  Every niche has their “gurus” and trusted authority figures.  People within that niche strive to become these figures.  If you are one of those people, this book gives a great explanation of how to achieve your goals.

Affiliate Marketers Who Want To Sell More Effectively

Although the book does not specifically speak about this, the concepts that are taught can easily be ported into affiliate marketing.  Making affiliate sales involves developing trust with your prospects.  Using the concepts explained in “Trust Agents” you can better understand what builds trust and put it to action.

Overall I think that “Trust Agents” was well worth reading.  It can be a little long winded at times but understanding the concepts of what builds trust on the web is vital for those who want to operate in the space.

Have you read “Trust Agents?”  What did you think of it?

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When I decided to do this local online marketing series I asked my good friend Dennis Yu of BlitzLocal to write a guest post.  Since you people love case studies, I asked for it to be a case study.  He obliged.  Below is a case study on Facebook vs. Google Adwords traffic on a local level.

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For our case study we sent traffic from both Facebook ads and Google Adwords to MyEstateManager.com. Below we’ll compare the data from each source and discuss the unique advantages of Facebook, as compared to Search Engine ad networks.

• Below are graphs of Impressions vs CPM for both Google and Facebook paid traffic over a six day period. Note: Impressions are the vertical axis, and CPM is the horizontal one.
• Google traffic is represented by an “Estate” ad group that contained keywords closely related to estate management.
• Facebook traffic is represented by advertisements that were directed at the demographics we had identified as being the most common customer of MyEstateManager.

• What we found was that Google Adwords has far more competition between advertisers than Facebook Ads. On the low end of Google’s price spectrum for our targeted keywords, we were able to get 7000 impressions in a day at a $1.6CPM. Compare that to Facebook, and we were able to get targeted traffic at equal volume for under $.15CPM – that’s less than 1/10^th the CPM on Google! +1 Facebook
• The bounce rates between the networks varied a bit as well. Google Adwords maintained a bounce rate of 48.38%, while Facebook’s was 41.54%. +1 Facebook
• Elasticity of both curves is important to note as well. Facebook’s curve is exponential, while Google’s is basically linear.
• Key Factors: One reason for that is the difference between network ad space and placement. Google has 10 ad placements on the first page, while Facebook advertisements only have the chance to appear in about 3 different spots. You can steadily bid up on Google to increase your ad position, while all the inventory on Facebook is divided amongst a few placements—if you aren’t showing up in these, you aren’t showing up at all. Another factor is competition; Facebook doesn’t have nearly as many publishers competing for the ad space, so a small change in Facebook CPM will make a greater difference than the same change in Google CPM.

Facebook Targeting as an Alternative to Search Engine Targeting

• There is other value in expanding advertising campaigns to Facebook that separates it from other Search Engine ad networks. In Facebook, users self-identify (gender, age, vocation, interests, etc) and can be targeted by who they are. Search Engines, such as Google restrict you to primarily targeting keywords, which means you target people based off of what they are looking for. That can lead to some difficulties depending on what your strategy is; for example, if you are a company that does primarily B2B marketing you may have keywords that show up in both B2B oriented searches and in consumer searches—take the keyword ‘cell phone cases,’ for example, a business that makes cell phone cases that are sold through other stores (Best Buy, Radio Shack, etc) wants to get business from people who will buy from them in bulk. They’re not interested in Joe Teenager who wants a shiny new case for his iPhone. On Google, it’s difficult to to screen out Joe Teenager and get John Executive Purchaser. On Facebook, because of the self-identification data, it may be a bit easier.
• Target your viewers effectively: Below are several targeting tips to apply to your Facebook campaigns.
  • Separate your ads to target males and females separately: men and women will almost always click at different patterns.
  • Tighten your age groups: instead of targeting all males or all females, narrow it down to 4 or 5 years apart max. Different ages require varying ad copy as well.
  • Make your users feel like your product is up to date. A good way of doing this is mentioning the month in your ad copy, or even related current events.

  

The main difference between these two ads is the picture, but that makes a significant difference. The ad on the left maintained a CTR of 0.08% vs 0.03% for the one on the right. Lesson: Users are more likely to click on an image that includes a person’s face.

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