100 million facebook ad impressions and counting...

There are more blogs and articles written about the Facebook advertising platform (social ads) than there are advertisers. Most of which have been written by people who have either never run an advertising campaign on Facebook or have perhaps run a very (very) limited run.

Here then is a blog that has been written by someone who has had their adverts served more than one hundred million times.

The initial excitement about Facebook advertising was the prospect that it would truly provide a contextual advertising engine that would enable advertisers to precisely target consumers by their interests.

This caused a number of strong reactions; those concerned with privacy raised the alarm about the level of personal data being collected and those who thought this was the marketing nirvana quickly went from a hallelujah mentality to a one of being harshly critical.

The reality is that Facebook advertising does not present the contextual power that those, like me, who joined the goldrush first thought possible. In short facebook do not know that much about us and what they do is reliant upon what we decide to say about ourselves.

With the exception of a few categories such as educational or relationship status (married, single, engaged) which opens the doors to some interesting advertising opportunities for dating sites or wedding specialists the rest of the targeting is based on keywords.

The theory as FB themselves put it is that you can use keywords to target your adverts to stating that 'your advert is more likely to perform better and continue running successfully if it is being displayed to the users who are most likely to be interested in your product or service':

The trouble for any advertiser who wants to reach a fairly broad audience is that the keywords are based on interests, activities, and favorite books, TV shows, movies, or job titles that users list in their Facebook profiles and whenever you look at a selection you normally find that the resulting number of people who have such a criteria are very low indeed.

The following screen shot shows that there are only 8720 males aged 18-25 interested in watching films:


On the upside certain demographic profiling, namely age, sex and location are really easy to implement and very useful. If, for example, you have a product to advertise to an adult male audience you can easily create a series of adverts to target men only and then segment your marketing by creating ads for different ages (18-24, 25-34 etc.) within your target market each with a different advert - should you desire.

Now let's tackle to next biggest cited reason not to advertise on Facebook "People do not visit Facebook to click adverts". Whilst this is true it does not mean that those who visit Facebook do not click on adverts.

Here then is some stats from one of my advertising campaigns that has been served 100 million times.

A CTR (click through rate) of 0.04% may sound staggeringly low but in reality it is akin to banner advertising and let us look at it another way my FB social adverts have delivered over forty thousand visitors to my website. All of whom have seen a small image and enough copy to let them know what to expect when they clicked on the advert - so that's 41,431 people who have, at least a passing interest in what I have to offer and I for one think this is impressive.

Boiling things down to the basics the question simply becomes did I get a worthwhile ROI (return on investment). Well would I have continued to advertise and spending many thousands of great British pounds (actually you are billed in dollars) if it were not bringing a result? No.

In fact this post itself has sparked the kernel for my next article 'In online marketing opinions count for nothing' (might need to work on the title). The point being with tracking in place and the cash flow to pay for the weekly facebook social advert bills you can test the market for relatively a small amount of money and if it works you can attempt to increase your budget.

What none of this article tackles is how to undertake a meaningful test in the first place - and this, as I have found is the real trick. Advertising on Facebook is a roller coaster experience with very little predictability. I know of several people who have simply failed to get out of the blocks and get there adverts served at all.

If you look at the very first screen shot (top of this article) you can see the peaks and troughs that are caused by your adverts serving extremely well on one day and then not at all the next day but perhaps I will leave this for a future article or commissions.

Freeconomics applied - Jean Patrique Chef Knives offered FREE

Chris Anderson (editor-in-chief at Wired magazine) coined the phrase 'The Long Tail' in 2004. The subsequent book of the same name undoubtedly helped businesses to rethink the way they look at marketing niche products.

In short Chris Anderson wrote a book that made a lot of people including me stop and really think about how we advised clients develop their online product catalogues.

Chris' latest project is simply called 'Free' which he intends to develop as his next book and he will, of course, give away for free.

Whilst it is normally a no-no for an author to promote the topic of their next book before it has been written Chris believes that by giving away his intellectual property and sharing the beginning of an idea the community will contribute and even help to refine your idea. More information can be read on the long-tail 'The Rise of Freecomomics'

The premise of freeconomics as I see it is that giving things away for free might give you your best shot at gaining a competitive advantage. As a consumer this of course sounds great but how can it work for businesses?

Well for a start I think we all expect something for nothing. This is not because we, as consumers have suddenly stopped wanted to consume goods or services by handing over our hard earned cash as much as we have all become used to be given things for free.

In the UK the artist now known once again as Prince gave away his latest album as a free with the Mail on Sunday newspaper. This resulted in more people owning and sharing his album and coincided with a UK tour which sold out in a matter of hours.

Radiohead allowed fans to download their last album for free. In doing so the product (album) was used to market the bands performances and merchandise. By getting the album distributed as widely as possible by giving away a download (which would cost them peanuts) was a very smart way to increase their fan base and a surefire way to fill concerts.

In other words they are changing their business model to a two-step sale. Low cost airlines are another perfect example; Ryanair gives away millions of plane tickets and today flies more passengers than most flag carriers. Whilst they lose money on the tickets they have found all sorts of innovative ways to tempt passengers to spend their money from the speedy boarding, to charing for the in flight coffee and selling scratch cards.

The internet will of course be credited with the birth of the freeconomics after all Google gave away its only services for free and built one of the largest organizations on the planet in less than 10 years. Has Google changed its business model. No. Sure it has added PPC but today Google is developing all sorts of software applications that they are set to give away.

Facebook and MySpace allow you to set up a free profile, upload your photos free, find your friends for free, upload videos, and play games with your friends for free. And the Open Source movement has given us all sorts of free software including the operating system Linux.

Some two weeks before I started reading about freeconomics I had the pleasure of being commissioned by Jean Patrique (a UK based professional cookware direct supplier) to develop a website to give away some of their leading products free (www.jeanpatriqueoffers.co.uk).

Jean Patrique had already experimented with this promotion via press advertising with some success and remain convinced that by giving away some of their products users will be suitably impressed by the quality of the product that they will turn into loyal customers.

The resulting website www.jeanpatriqueoffers.co.uk goes live tomorrow (10th March 2008) offering both a 5-piece knife set (worth over £125) and a professional 3-piece oriental knives (worth over £119) completely free.

Please make sure you check back here for the results.

Freeconomics - Jean Patrique Video

THE YEAR'S BEST [actual] HEADLINES OF 2007

In blogging, as in most applications of creative writing, a winning headline is a must!


Crack Found on Governor's Daughter
[Imagine that!]


Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Expert Says
[No, really?]

Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers
[Now that's taking things a bit far!]

Is There a Ring of Debris around Uranus?
[Not if I wipe thoroughly!]


Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over
[What a guy!]


Miners Refuse to Work after Death
[No-good-for-nothing' lazy so-and-so!]


Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant
[See if that works any better than a fair trial!]


War Dims Hope for Peace
[I can see where it might have that effect!]


If Strike Isn't Settled Quickly, It May Last Awhile
[You think?]


Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures
[Who would have thought!]

Enfield ( London ) Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide
[They may be on to something!]


Red Tape Holds Up New Bridges
[You mean there's something stronger than duct tape?]


Man Struck By Lightning: Faces Battery Charge
[he probably IS the battery charge!]


New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group
[Weren't they fat enough?!]


Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas
in Spacecraft
[That's what he gets for eating those beans!]


Kids Make Nutritious Snacks
[Taste like chicken?]


Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half
[Chainsaw Massacre all over again!]


Hospitals are Sued by 7 Foot Doctors
[Boy, are they tall!]


And the winner is....

Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead

8 really useful facebook advertising tips you should know before running an ad campaign

Facebook advertising is incredibly simple to use, at first but advertiser beware there are many subtle lessons to learn if you want to see your clicks climb like this diagram.

1. You must 'get' facebook to stand a chance of using it as a marketing platform - If you are cynical about facebook you are always going to struggle; and do not think that you can simply use your standard PPC tactics and ad copy on facebook - if you do you will fail.
   
   
2. People are not on facebook looking for your product - in fact I would go further than this and state that most people find ads served in their profile an intrusion. Your advert therefore needs to well targeted and your copy designed to resonate with your target market.
   
   
3. The beauty of facebook is targeting adverts (if you have the right product to promote) because you can target certain demographics including gender, age and even marital status - handy if you are a wedding supplier wanting to target women who are engaged.
   
   
4. You cannot use different credit cards for different advertising campaigns. As a veteran PPC hack I assumed you can use multiple credit cards; alas I got caught out when creating a new advert because Facebook advertising gives you the opportunity to add another card. However if you do indeed add another credit card all you are doing is logging a secondary (back-up) credit card.
   
   
5. The goldrush has begun - with so many people flocking to advertise the cost per click and per thousand impression is going up and fast. However here is my first golden tip - even if you are running an advert go through the process of creating a new advert as you might be surprised at the suggested bid amounts (I have noticed them race up to a reccommended minimum bid of 50cents and 2 days later be down to 31).
   
   
6. You are not guaranteed any number of clicks or impressions. Even when you have an advert that starts to perform well do not be surprised when it fails to serve the next day - this is most likely because a batch of new advertisers have joined the party and out bidding you. Golden tip number two - do not panic or rush to up your bid give it a couple of days and your adverts will most likely be back.
   
   
7. Facebook will select the best ad to run based on the cost per click or cost per thousand impressions and ad performance (this is really important and will form the basis of my next blog so why not subscribe via e-mail or rss now).
   
   
8. You have no control over when your adverts will be served. Running facebook campaigns can be very frustrating as you will wait around wondering what more you must do to get your adverts to appear and then all of a sudden wham they're off. At this point you want to hope your ads start performing (receiving clicks) else they will stop being served as quickly as they started.