3 ms·
Comapring apples and oranges. Facebook ad clicks are not the same thing as advertised website's uniques/visitors/hits/sessions/whatever. Especially if the latt
by Sujan 11y ago
Comapring apples and oranges.
Facebook ad clicks are not the same thing as advertised website's uniques/visitors/hits/sessions/whatever. Especially if the latter is using external tracking that uses JS and tends to be blocked/opt-out by some.
Facebook clicks are really 'clicks', not 'unique people clicking', they are also not 'successfully redirected after click', maybe not even 'click successfully finished and not reverted by aborting'. It just means someone clicked or tapped on the thing used to advertise.
So yes, you get what you pay for, and in the case of Facebook it's their definition of a 'click' you are paying for.
By the way:
You get pretty close to their numbers when using a redirect script that loads in a few ms and just writes 'hits' to a database and then again redirects to you to your normal target website. Not 100%, but much better than using GA or any other external tracking on the target website.
- adarsh_thampy 11y agoAs I mentioned in one of the earlier comments, the difference in reported numbers is just too big. Some amount of discrepancy is acceptable. If people are clicking on FB ads and not landing on our website for whatever reason, then those are probably bot clicks.
- Sujan 11y agoRepeat the test with a small PHP script in between that does +1 every time it is called to a value in the database of a text file. Then redirect to the real website that you track using GA or your own tool. Until then, unfortunately, your argument is invalid. I think you will see this number will be quite close to what Facebook reports. What's left then, still isn't 100% fraud done by Facebook as you somewhat imply, but also aborted clicks etc, but a number we can actually discuss.
- saddestcatever 11y agoWhat are your thoughts on "accidental clicks"? Say, I accidentally click a facebook ad while scrolling, then close the new browser window before your site's analytics scripts load. Would that account for a large difference? I know that I thick-thumb at least 10 ads for every ad that I intentionally select.
- softawre 11y agoAnalytics scripts are at the very top of the HTML file usually, and are one of the first things loaded. In this case you'd be counted I think.
- DougN7 11y agoI doubt very much that your scenario matches the general public. My guess is your scenario is maybe 5% tops (based on no reproducible data!) :)