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FaceBook is scammy on many levels. Their ads business always reports very inflated numbers. We spend $1000/mnth on FB ads. They show millions of impressions an

by nojvek 8y ago

FaceBook is scammy on many levels. Their ads business always reports very inflated numbers. We spend $1000/mnth on FB ads. They show millions of impressions and 20k link clicks. However only 2k visits are shown by both google analytics and Mixpanel on the actual website. It really seems like an empire that will crumble some day.

lapnitnelav 8y ago
Ah funny you mention that. Years ago I was doing tech support for a 3rd party ad management software mostly focused on Search (Google + Bing) but had also a FB part. While digging into some discrepancy issues, I realised our own tracker was picking up way less clicks than what FB alleged. Across all the cases (a handful at best) I was involved in, this appeared over and over. I remember going back to our internal FB team highlighting that. Never heard back from them and had too much on my plate to bother with it. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that picked up on that.
crankylinuxuser 8y ago
That sure seems like fraud. If they claim X and you can only prove .1X " they are either incompetent (doubtful) or they are defrauding you.
jannes 8y ago
Maybe some of your users block Google Analytics/Mixpanel while not blocking Facebook ads. For example, because they are using the mobile app or because Facebook ads are harder to block...
- driverdan 8y ago
  There is no way that 90% of their traffic is blocking both GA and Mixpanel.
thecatspaw 8y ago
Sounds like facebook counts accidential clicks. It often happens to me that I click on ads on my phone accidentially, but click back before the page actually loads.
Havoc 8y ago
>20k link clicks. However only 2k visits are shown by both google analytics Worth pointing out that if you run say cloudflare and g analytics you get similar discrepancy numbers. (Also about 1:10 in my experience). Read various theories on why - most focus on js tracking vs pure traffic.

by nojvek 8y ago

lapnitnelav 8y ago

Ah funny you mention that. Years ago I was doing tech support for a 3rd party ad management software mostly focused on Search (Google + Bing) but had also a FB part. While digging into some discrepancy issues, I realised our own tracker was picking up way less clicks than what FB alleged. Across all the cases (a handful at best) I was involved in, this appeared over and over. I remember going back to our internal FB team highlighting that. Never heard back from them and had too much on my plate to bother with it. I'm glad to see I'm not the only one that picked up on that.

crankylinuxuser 8y ago

That sure seems like fraud. If they claim X and you can only prove .1X " they are either incompetent (doubtful) or they are defrauding you.

jannes 8y ago

Maybe some of your users block Google Analytics/Mixpanel while not blocking Facebook ads. For example, because they are using the mobile app or because Facebook ads are harder to block...

driverdan 8y ago
There is no way that 90% of their traffic is blocking both GA and Mixpanel.

thecatspaw 8y ago

Sounds like facebook counts accidential clicks. It often happens to me that I click on ads on my phone accidentially, but click back before the page actually loads.

Havoc 8y ago

>20k link clicks. However only 2k visits are shown by both google analytics Worth pointing out that if you run say cloudflare and g analytics you get similar discrepancy numbers. (Also about 1:10 in my experience). Read various theories on why - most focus on js tracking vs pure traffic.