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As a rough datapoint, I run a consumer targeted e-commerce site. We ran a campaign before Christmas were we were selling a new product that was only marketed on

As a rough datapoint, I run a consumer targeted e-commerce site. We ran a campaign before Christmas were we were selling a new product that was only marketed on Facebook, we are certain that (almost) all customers found it though that Facebook campaign. Facebook was only able to attribute about 50% of the sales to the ads, it should have been close to 100%. This then meant that Facebooks estimated CPA was effectively double what it actually was. Important to note about 60% of our customers are on an iOS device, which is a little higher than the global average but matches the market segment we are in in the UK. The situation improved after about 4 weeks, I believe Facebook now uses some "AI" to help with attribution on iOS, but it's somewhat difficult to be sure as by then we had other campaigns running. So, this will definitely be effecting marketers decision making process of where to allocate spend. It certainly made us more courteous about spending on Facebook.

wizzwizz4 5y ago
> Facebook was only able to attribute about 50% of the sales to the ads, it should have been close to 100%. Word-of-mouth exists. It's possible Facebook wasn't making it up. Did you use a Facebook-specific link in the ads?
- samwillis 5y ago
  > Word-of-mouth exists True. However in this case we are confident, based on our own internal tracking and metrics, that this is correct.
  - geoduck14 5y ago
    >True. However in this case we are confident, based on our own internal tracking and metrics, that this is correct. I'm really curious what you sell now. Can you tell us? If not, can the rest of HN create fun speculations?
    - SllX 5y ago
      > If not, can the rest of HN create fun speculations? Human armpit-scented cat toys.
      - bduerst 5y ago
        Mechanical keyboard keys that are 10" tall for standing desks.
        Guest42 5y ago
        Subscription beach towel service printed with top 5 memes by volume
        wizzwizz4 5y ago
        Minecraft parody as a service
        nerdite 5y ago
        Lord of the rings themed oscilloscopes.
    - danudey 5y ago
      Maybe they had a drop-down saying "How did you hear about us?" with just "Facebook Ads" and "Not Facebook Ads", that's my theory.
    - lkasdlkdad 5y ago
      Check his profile, he sells posters.
- Ntrails 5y ago
  > Did you use a Facebook-specific link in the ads? I do sometimes find it odd that such a thing is insufficient for tracking sources of traffic in and of itself. No doubt there is a complexity that I have missed
Nextgrid 5y ago
Out of curiosity, why can’t you just make the ad point to a custom URL (on which you can then set a cookie if you wanted) and do attribution that way?
- samwillis 5y ago
  That is almost exactly what UTM url parameters are [0]. We use these and via them our other tracking collaborates our theory on Facebooks tracking. There is actually a real problem with tracking via cookies on Facebook ads when the destination is a website. The ad click will open in a Facebook "In App Browser", any cookie that you (or any analytical service) sets will be within that IAB. If the user then uses the "open in Safari/Chrome" option that tracking can be broken as there is no cookie. Ideally you want your visitor to either complete their transaction within the IAB or to use the "open in Safari" option immediately so that any tracking parameters are copied to the other browser allowing the cookie to be set. In our case the majority of our customers will have a better experience outside of the IAB and so we have a popup that prompts them to use "open in Safari" before navigating away from the first page view. We actually implemented this after noticing a very high drop out rate for iOS Facebook IAB users during our checkout. What was happening is address/payment card autocomplete isn't available within the Facebook IAB and people were clicking "open in Safari" during the checkout in order to use it, they would then find themselves with an empty shopping cart, hence the drop out. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTM_parameters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTM_parameters
  - danudey 5y ago
    So not only is the Facebook/Instagram "try to lock users into our own browser to track them" thing user-hostile, but it actually harms companies that are using ads by having them drop in the middle of the funnel?
  - iamadiggo 5y ago
    This is interesting. Are you saying because some user switch to safari during checkout and tracking lost here? Since cookie will be cleared. But how about these special query param as you mentioned? That still can be maintained for tracking?
ksec 5y ago
I cant upvote you enough. This single comment contains many of the contrarian view against HN. It is nice we have these real world stories on HN to balance the ideological fight against ads, where All Ads are evil.
- travisporter 5y ago
  Well no one's arguing that targeted ads are not effective. This is just an example of how well it works, so upvoting it may not be the best way to bolster your side of the fight.
  - ksec 5y ago
    >Well no one's arguing that targeted ads are not effective. Oh they sure were. All ads are useless. Targeted ads are evil. And Ads should not be targeted were the HN's view, which later became there shouldn't even be any ads, it should all be subscription. That is 2018/19. By 20/21 HN were even targeting those who were working inside the online Ad industry. And this is seen across the tens of thousands of comments. ( Say 50 Thread of 200 comments ) It became such a problem that people working inside Ad industry were even afraid to post their views on HN. And they have to be upvoted to make sure there are still sanity inside the HN community.
    - ratww 5y ago
      Arguing that "ads are evil" is different from calling them ineffective. Most people dislike targeted ads them because of privacy/resource usage issues. Other people dislike ads in general. Some of those want ads to stop existing exactly because of how effective they are.
    - llbeansandrice 5y ago
      > All ads are useless I don't think I've ever seen someone say this. People hate that they make the internet impossible to use. I have a family friend that runs a small business and all of the revenue comes from ads on the websites they run. I hate using their website because of the ads. Pop-up that takes up the whole screen asking to subscribe, auto-play video ad, content moving as ads get loaded slowly. It's all just awful to use. The ads are absolutely effective though.
prasadjoglekar 5y ago
Agreed. For advertisers with larger budgets, marketing mix models are still the only way to understand the relative performance of FB, Google, TV etc. - each of which is a "walled garden" that doesn't exchange data with others. FB marketing is effective, question is at what price. If those prices drop, ad dollars will flow back. It will take a few quarterly modeling cycles to reflect this though. The contra-contrarian view is this: FB, Google have an unusual mix of large, medium and small advertisers all bidding for the same inventory. That's what makes FB and Google somewhat immune to large advertiser pricing pressures (and issue of the day spend bans). However, only the larger advertisers have budgets for complicated cross-publisher modeling. If organic FB tools show higher CPAs, it will drive the smaller marketers to other platforms causing some interesting feedback loops.
- samwillis 5y ago
  Exactly, as a small business we are completely dependent on the ad platforms internal attribution tools, if they don't work or can't be trusted we won't use them. It's unfortunate that the incredably invasive tracking and profile building has become conflated with ad attribution. For us attribution is essential and we have little interest or use for invasive tracking. We just want to know from which ad a customer converted. Personally we avoid the more invasive remarking tools as I hate it myself when you are chased across the web by a product you have looked at once.
  - yuliyp 5y ago
    What do you mean by conflated? The tracking and profile building is how they correlate results with ad impressions. That this data is then also used for training the models and identifying the user coefficients is just a different use of the same correlation data (a website visit is just another type of ad conversion, after all).
    - laurent92 5y ago
      We shouldn’t identify the user. We should identify the content. “I want to be shown next to car pictures, because maybe the guy is missing carpets for his car” instead of “We want to be shown to guys 24-30 with interest in cars.” First is tracking the content, second is tracking the user.
azalemeth 5y ago
What is the shop? I partly live in the UK, don't run iOS, don't use Facebook and block ads about a billion different ways at once. There's a chance I might be interested in your products.
- paulcole 5y ago
  If you used Facebook and didn’t block ads about a billion different ways, you might already know what their product is!
  - jackjeff 5y ago
    But then again. If it was an interesting product, Facebook would be the last place on earth where it’s advertised. Don’t know what it is but I’m predicting it sucks.
jbay808 5y ago
Is it possible that some fans spread the word organically after they initially found your product through FB?
- samwillis 5y ago
  Yes, maybe a tiny proportion, but to nowhere near the extent of what we saw. We are 100% confident in our assessment.
nonameiguess 5y ago
You attribute 0% of purchases to repeat loyal customers who just check in on what you're selling every now and again without needing to be reminded by a marketing campaign?
- samwillis 5y ago
  Sensible question, we took this into account in our assessment. I stand by it.
DaveExeter 5y ago
>So, this will definitely be effecting marketers decision making process Affecting, not effecting. >It certainly made us more courteous about spending on Facebook. We assume you meant "cautious" and not "courteous".
Irishsteve 5y ago
If this holds true the headline should really be companies / brands double marketing roi due to apple privacy changes
ComputerGuru 5y ago
> I believe Facebook now uses some "AI" to help with attribution on iOS Is that even legal? With AI, you can never concretely prove anything, so you then have Facebook literally making up numbers it pinky swears are legit and billing you accordingly (semi-directly because while you're not paying per click, the landing page analytics are also used to weed out robo clicks and other fraud that you shouldn't be billed for).
- blacksmith_tb 5y ago
  I am not sure it's ethical, but I don't think any laws would be broken - if their customers don't like paying for imaginary services, well, they can go elsewhere... or can they?
  - ComputerGuru 5y ago
    If they tell you they’re imaginary numbers, sure. But if they don’t?
GekkePrutser 5y ago
If you're so certain, it means you already have reliable data for attribution. Why do you need Facebook's tracking to confirm it to you? I understand it's nice to have fancy reports etc but it sounds like you already know where your customers are coming from. And tracking is very invasive, in this case it doesn't really seem to add much value. You could also ask your customers "where did you hear about us" for example. Perhaps you already do and that's the source of that 100%. If not you might even discover a way you didn't know of. Eg word of mouth, some obscure forum where your product was mentioned. As well as that it's a method where you respect your users' privacy.
- samwillis 5y ago
  > If you're so certain, it means you already have reliable data for attribution. Why do you need Facebook's tracking to confirm it to you? We were in unique situation with this one campaign where, quite right, we knew where our conversions were coming from as we were confident there was no other source. Within a few weeks we had other campaigns running and no longer could have the same level of confidence. The point it outside of this unique situate of a new product only marketed on Facebook the conversion attribution on their platform is broken. This is affecting marketers decision making process and reducing the spend on that platform. The interesting thing is we were able to see the affect of Apples change quite clearly. Most people are not able to see that.

wizzwizz4 5y ago

> Facebook was only able to attribute about 50% of the sales to the ads, it should have been close to 100%. Word-of-mouth exists. It's possible Facebook wasn't making it up. Did you use a Facebook-specific link in the ads?

samwillis 5y ago
> Word-of-mouth exists True. However in this case we are confident, based on our own internal tracking and metrics, that this is correct.
- geoduck14 5y ago
  >True. However in this case we are confident, based on our own internal tracking and metrics, that this is correct. I'm really curious what you sell now. Can you tell us? If not, can the rest of HN create fun speculations?
  - SllX 5y ago
    > If not, can the rest of HN create fun speculations? Human armpit-scented cat toys.
    - bduerst 5y ago
      Mechanical keyboard keys that are 10" tall for standing desks.
      - Guest42 5y ago
        Subscription beach towel service printed with top 5 memes by volume
        wizzwizz4 5y ago
        Minecraft parody as a service
      - nerdite 5y ago
        Lord of the rings themed oscilloscopes.
  - danudey 5y ago
    Maybe they had a drop-down saying "How did you hear about us?" with just "Facebook Ads" and "Not Facebook Ads", that's my theory.
  - lkasdlkdad 5y ago
    Check his profile, he sells posters.
Ntrails 5y ago
> Did you use a Facebook-specific link in the ads? I do sometimes find it odd that such a thing is insufficient for tracking sources of traffic in and of itself. No doubt there is a complexity that I have missed

Nextgrid 5y ago

Out of curiosity, why can’t you just make the ad point to a custom URL (on which you can then set a cookie if you wanted) and do attribution that way?

samwillis 5y ago
That is almost exactly what UTM url parameters are [0]. We use these and via them our other tracking collaborates our theory on Facebooks tracking. There is actually a real problem with tracking via cookies on Facebook ads when the destination is a website. The ad click will open in a Facebook "In App Browser", any cookie that you (or any analytical service) sets will be within that IAB. If the user then uses the "open in Safari/Chrome" option that tracking can be broken as there is no cookie. Ideally you want your visitor to either complete their transaction within the IAB or to use the "open in Safari" option immediately so that any tracking parameters are copied to the other browser allowing the cookie to be set. In our case the majority of our customers will have a better experience outside of the IAB and so we have a popup that prompts them to use "open in Safari" before navigating away from the first page view. We actually implemented this after noticing a very high drop out rate for iOS Facebook IAB users during our checkout. What was happening is address/payment card autocomplete isn't available within the Facebook IAB and people were clicking "open in Safari" during the checkout in order to use it, they would then find themselves with an empty shopping cart, hence the drop out. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTM_parameters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTM_parameters
- danudey 5y ago
  So not only is the Facebook/Instagram "try to lock users into our own browser to track them" thing user-hostile, but it actually harms companies that are using ads by having them drop in the middle of the funnel?
- iamadiggo 5y ago
  This is interesting. Are you saying because some user switch to safari during checkout and tracking lost here? Since cookie will be cleared. But how about these special query param as you mentioned? That still can be maintained for tracking?

ksec 5y ago

I cant upvote you enough. This single comment contains many of the contrarian view against HN. It is nice we have these real world stories on HN to balance the ideological fight against ads, where All Ads are evil.

travisporter 5y ago
Well no one's arguing that targeted ads are not effective. This is just an example of how well it works, so upvoting it may not be the best way to bolster your side of the fight.
- ksec 5y ago
  >Well no one's arguing that targeted ads are not effective. Oh they sure were. All ads are useless. Targeted ads are evil. And Ads should not be targeted were the HN's view, which later became there shouldn't even be any ads, it should all be subscription. That is 2018/19. By 20/21 HN were even targeting those who were working inside the online Ad industry. And this is seen across the tens of thousands of comments. ( Say 50 Thread of 200 comments ) It became such a problem that people working inside Ad industry were even afraid to post their views on HN. And they have to be upvoted to make sure there are still sanity inside the HN community.
  - ratww 5y ago
    Arguing that "ads are evil" is different from calling them ineffective. Most people dislike targeted ads them because of privacy/resource usage issues. Other people dislike ads in general. Some of those want ads to stop existing exactly because of how effective they are.
  - llbeansandrice 5y ago
    > All ads are useless I don't think I've ever seen someone say this. People hate that they make the internet impossible to use. I have a family friend that runs a small business and all of the revenue comes from ads on the websites they run. I hate using their website because of the ads. Pop-up that takes up the whole screen asking to subscribe, auto-play video ad, content moving as ads get loaded slowly. It's all just awful to use. The ads are absolutely effective though.

prasadjoglekar 5y ago

Agreed. For advertisers with larger budgets, marketing mix models are still the only way to understand the relative performance of FB, Google, TV etc. - each of which is a "walled garden" that doesn't exchange data with others. FB marketing is effective, question is at what price. If those prices drop, ad dollars will flow back. It will take a few quarterly modeling cycles to reflect this though. The contra-contrarian view is this: FB, Google have an unusual mix of large, medium and small advertisers all bidding for the same inventory. That's what makes FB and Google somewhat immune to large advertiser pricing pressures (and issue of the day spend bans). However, only the larger advertisers have budgets for complicated cross-publisher modeling. If organic FB tools show higher CPAs, it will drive the smaller marketers to other platforms causing some interesting feedback loops.

samwillis 5y ago
Exactly, as a small business we are completely dependent on the ad platforms internal attribution tools, if they don't work or can't be trusted we won't use them. It's unfortunate that the incredably invasive tracking and profile building has become conflated with ad attribution. For us attribution is essential and we have little interest or use for invasive tracking. We just want to know from which ad a customer converted. Personally we avoid the more invasive remarking tools as I hate it myself when you are chased across the web by a product you have looked at once.
- yuliyp 5y ago
  What do you mean by conflated? The tracking and profile building is how they correlate results with ad impressions. That this data is then also used for training the models and identifying the user coefficients is just a different use of the same correlation data (a website visit is just another type of ad conversion, after all).
  - laurent92 5y ago
    We shouldn’t identify the user. We should identify the content. “I want to be shown next to car pictures, because maybe the guy is missing carpets for his car” instead of “We want to be shown to guys 24-30 with interest in cars.” First is tracking the content, second is tracking the user.

azalemeth 5y ago

What is the shop? I partly live in the UK, don't run iOS, don't use Facebook and block ads about a billion different ways at once. There's a chance I might be interested in your products.

paulcole 5y ago
If you used Facebook and didn’t block ads about a billion different ways, you might already know what their product is!
- jackjeff 5y ago
  But then again. If it was an interesting product, Facebook would be the last place on earth where it’s advertised. Don’t know what it is but I’m predicting it sucks.

jbay808 5y ago

Is it possible that some fans spread the word organically after they initially found your product through FB?

samwillis 5y ago
Yes, maybe a tiny proportion, but to nowhere near the extent of what we saw. We are 100% confident in our assessment.

nonameiguess 5y ago

You attribute 0% of purchases to repeat loyal customers who just check in on what you're selling every now and again without needing to be reminded by a marketing campaign?

samwillis 5y ago
Sensible question, we took this into account in our assessment. I stand by it.

DaveExeter 5y ago

>So, this will definitely be effecting marketers decision making process Affecting, not effecting. >It certainly made us more courteous about spending on Facebook. We assume you meant "cautious" and not "courteous".

Irishsteve 5y ago

If this holds true the headline should really be companies / brands double marketing roi due to apple privacy changes

ComputerGuru 5y ago

> I believe Facebook now uses some "AI" to help with attribution on iOS Is that even legal? With AI, you can never concretely prove anything, so you then have Facebook literally making up numbers it pinky swears are legit and billing you accordingly (semi-directly because while you're not paying per click, the landing page analytics are also used to weed out robo clicks and other fraud that you shouldn't be billed for).

blacksmith_tb 5y ago
I am not sure it's ethical, but I don't think any laws would be broken - if their customers don't like paying for imaginary services, well, they can go elsewhere... or can they?
- ComputerGuru 5y ago
  If they tell you they’re imaginary numbers, sure. But if they don’t?

GekkePrutser 5y ago

If you're so certain, it means you already have reliable data for attribution. Why do you need Facebook's tracking to confirm it to you? I understand it's nice to have fancy reports etc but it sounds like you already know where your customers are coming from. And tracking is very invasive, in this case it doesn't really seem to add much value. You could also ask your customers "where did you hear about us" for example. Perhaps you already do and that's the source of that 100%. If not you might even discover a way you didn't know of. Eg word of mouth, some obscure forum where your product was mentioned. As well as that it's a method where you respect your users' privacy.

samwillis 5y ago
> If you're so certain, it means you already have reliable data for attribution. Why do you need Facebook's tracking to confirm it to you? We were in unique situation with this one campaign where, quite right, we knew where our conversions were coming from as we were confident there was no other source. Within a few weeks we had other campaigns running and no longer could have the same level of confidence. The point it outside of this unique situate of a new product only marketed on Facebook the conversion attribution on their platform is broken. This is affecting marketers decision making process and reducing the spend on that platform. The interesting thing is we were able to see the affect of Apples change quite clearly. Most people are not able to see that.