Me and Facebook Ads have a falling out
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Unlike many in the affiliate marketing world I’d had a bit of success with Facebook Ads but I’ve had enough of them now and I’m moving myself into the sceptics’ camp. In my previous posts I’ve written about the ups and downs and given a couple of tips I’d picked up on the way. I thought I had it figured. This week, Facebook decided to pull the rug from underneath me.
First up, they’ve taken to pulling ads without so much as a hint what the problem might be. In fact, they give you a hint as to what the problem almost certainly isn’t. I had one ad pulled because the ad wasn’t representative of the product. Except it was. It said “Get a free Nintendo Wii when you buy a qualifying mobile” and took you to the merchant’s site where the qualifying mobiles are displayed. Apparently this isn’t enough.
A second ad was pulled because “The text and/or image of this ad violates part or all of sections 4, 5, and 6 of Facebook’s Advertising Guidelines.” So I emailed them to find out what was wrong. Apparently if you run an ad for a dating site you have to mention the site name in the ad. Is this in their terms and conditions? No, it isn’t.
Now I don’t mind Facebook having rules. I don’t even mind them having quirky rules for no good reason. But what I do mind is them having secret rules they don’t bother to tell anyone and which require several emails before they’ll even tell you.
The second thing relates to stats. I’ve blogged before about the bizarre stats system which shows you rolling totals for the past 24 hours. There’s no historical data other than the total number of impressions and clicks per day. You can’t see which ad has been getting the clicks. There’s no way to export data for analysis. There’s no indication of how CPC relates to the number of impressions you get. You end up spending all day checking your stats and babysitting your bids just to make sure you aren’t blowing all your budget.
Which brings me to my third point: the daily budget limit which isn’t limited. Half way through one day last week I decided my return on Facebook ads was in danger of falling too low. So I lowered my daily budget to make sure I didn’t end up spending more than I was comfortable with losing if conversions dropped off. I was somewhat surprised therefore that I ended that day exceeding my new budget. Again, I don’t mind too much if a budget can’t be changed during the day but if that’s the case then tell me about it! Don’t just leave me to figure it out after the fact.
All in all I’ve decided that Facebook ads are more trouble than they’re worth. It’s mainly poor execution and Facebook’s characteristic disregard for what anyone thinks of them. They’ve already backpedalled on Beacon, let’s hope they go and rethink the rest of their ad platform too.
Regular readers will be pleased to know this is the last posting I’m doing on Facebook for a while. I never intended to write this much about them. I hope it’s at least been some use to someone.
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