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The results are also absolutely terrible. There are a ton to criticize about google's adplatform (from user data handling to transparency to semi-monopoly to .
by nolok 6y ago
The results are also absolutely terrible.
There are a ton to criticize about google's adplatform (from user data handling to transparency to semi-monopoly to ...) but at the end of day if I make a proper well targeted campaign I get matching results.
Not all of them and there are some obvious false in there (ergo the need for transparency), but for every company who I have personnaly done the adwords campaign, as long as I disable the display network and make sure the campaign is well made, I get my bang for the buck.
On the other hand I'm still not sure why anyone who isn't scam or retargeting advertises on facebook, its "leads" are absolutely terrible in quality. I'm the kind who is willing to spend lots of time and a/b testing on my campaign (since at the end of the day it's the source of my money), but no matter what I do it costs me between 3 and 20 times more on facebook than on google to get the same number of end game sales.
It's a terrible ad network. When I dabbled in adult toys sales a while back I had to deal with adult networks ads and even THEY were better. Honestly it's impressive to me how bad it is.
(ads are purely textual and non retargeted, real products or services with great reviews)
- 55555 6y agoThe traffic quality is amazing. Your results may vary. We all put up with FB's BS because their traffic is gold. Yes the lead gen feature isnt great but if you can't profit from FB traffic you are doing something wrong.
- nolok 6y agoI'm not saying I can't profit, didn't say that at all. I'm saying if I have a buck to put, it's worth several times more on adwords than on fb. If you are traffic starved then sure fb could be usefull but I suspect the vast majority of small/medium business runs out of ad budget before they run out of adwords growth capabilities, and they value qualified leads much more than raw traffic. Again OF COURSE it varies by business and I'm sure other people have the opposite experience, but mine has been clear cut and I shared it.
- aerosmile 6y agoYou shared it without enough nuance, and that turned it into misleading information for most people out there. The fact that you wrote a lengthy piece and gave yourself a lot of credit as a marketer only further exacerbated the negative learnings for anyone who read your first piece. I am glad you received an immediate rebuttal, which leads me to hope that not too many young entrepreneurs were led to turn their back on what's arguably one of the most important marketing channels, and for many companies the only viable one.
- nolok 6y agoI disagree with your point but I want to answer one part in particular: > gave yourself a lot of credit as a marketer I in no way intended to do that. If I did, I apologize. I may be bad, or good, or decent, or terrible at it, I don't know. The point I was trying to make on that part of my original comment was simply: I do spend time on my campaign and A/B test difference, not as-in "I'm great", but as-in "I didn' just make my first campaign there in 5 minutes without trying to improve it or learn from my mistakes" because I think anecdotal evidences given from that point of view have no value at all. So again, sorry if that is indeed what can be understood in what I wrote because that would be egoistical and wrong, but I genuinely don't believe that's what I wrote.
- dylan604 6y agoI absolutely did not have the same reaction you had to their post. The very first sentence could be read as a broad brush statement, but the rest of the post makes it clear it was based on their personal experience. If that wasn't understood, then either the full post wasn't read or reading comprehension isn't as strong with some readers (ESL could factor).
- dhimes 6y agoWhat is the price-point of what you sell? Do you sell a $20 product, a $200 product, a $2000 product? Google has gotten expensive, a bidding for adwords with a $20 product has never seemed like a good idea to me.
- dalbasal 6y ago>> It's a terrible ad network It's a $70bn ad network. All that revenue comes from highly liquid ad budgets. It's naive to conclude that fb ads "don't work" from anecdote... Not working most of the time is the norm for advertising, but the scale comes from the cases where it does work.
- throwaway2048 6y agoA lot more than 70 billion dollars has been spent on things that not only don't work, but are impossible, even in theory.
- aerosmile 6y agoWhy a throwaway account? Let's hear some examples where millions of independent thinkers and analysts supported the things you talk about for over a decade.
- dalbasal 6y agoI get the notion, but $70bn doesn't get spent on that many things... Maybe weapons projects. Anyway... this is just not the case here. The advertisers that pour budgets into fb aren't suckers. They're highly roi-sensitive and data cognizant. All advertising fails much of the time, but when it doesn't it scales.
- edouard-harris 6y agoCould the explanation be that different ad platforms perform better for different products or services? I've heard (no direct experience) that FB leads tend to be high-quality when one is advertising, e.g., mobile games monetized through in-game purchasing.
- nolok 6y agoProbably yes. For references my own ads have been looking for leads (not traffic, not subscription/registration), and the areas have been education, IT services, home help services and niche market retail sales (aka low sales but of several thousands per unit products).