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Copying the text just incase FB decides they don't like it --- Hey everyone, we're going to be deleting our Facebook page in the next couple of weeks, but we

by reustle 14y ago

Copying the text just incase FB decides they don't like it --- Hey everyone, we're going to be deleting our Facebook page in the next couple of weeks, but we wanted to explain why before we do. A couple months ago, when we were preparing to launch the new Limited Run, we started to experiment with Facebook ads. Unfortunately, while testing their ad system, we noticed some very strange things. Facebook was charging us for clicks, yet we could only verify about 20% of them actually showing up on our site. At first, we thought it was our analytics service. We tried signing up for a handful of other big name companies, and still, we couldn't verify more than 15-20% of clicks. So we did what any good developers would do. We built our own analytic software. Here's what we found: on about 80% of the clicks Facebook was charging us for, JavaScript wasn't on. And if the person clicking the ad doesn't have JavaScript, it's very difficult for an analytics service to verify the click. What's important here is that in all of our years of experience, only about 1-2% of people coming to us have JavaScript disabled, not 80% like these clicks coming from Facebook. So we did what any good developers would do. We built a page logger. Any time a page was loaded, we'd keep track of it. You know what we found? The 80% of clicks we were paying for were from bots. That's correct. Bots were loading pages and driving up our advertising costs. So we tried contacting Facebook about this. Unfortunately, they wouldn't reply. Do we know who the bots belong too? No. Are we accusing Facebook of using bots to drive up advertising revenue. No. Is it strange? Yes. But let's move on, because who the bots belong to isn't provable. While we were testing Facebook ads, we were also trying to get Facebook to let us change our name, because we're not Limited Pressing anymore. We contacted them on many occasions about this. Finally, we got a call from someone at Facebook. They said they would allow us to change our name. NICE! But only if we agreed to spend $2000 or more in advertising a month. That's correct. Facebook was holding our name hostage. So we did what any good hardcore kids would do. We cursed that piece of shit out! Damn we were so pissed. We still are. This is why we need to delete this page and move away from Facebook. They're scumbags and we just don't have the patience for scumbags. Thanks to everyone who has supported this page and liked our posts. We really appreciate it. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, where we don't get shaken down, you can do so here: http://twitter.com/limitedrun http://twitter.com/limitedrun

eytanlevit 14y ago
Happend to us too!! we first thought kissmetrics was wrong, so we built a logger that logged server side requests and a client side code that executes on load of the landing page, and we found that 70% of the server side hits had javascript disabled(or that hit the page and left it before the js executed, which seems improbable for such a large number - 70%).
- tectonic 14y ago
  What user agent was reported by those hits? This is fascinating.
  - eytanlevit 14y ago
    It was a few months ago and we've already deleted the db table, we are soon relaunching with a new campaign, so once I get the data again I'll post it here.
- Cushman 14y ago
  > (or that hit the page and left it before the js executed, which seems improbable for such a large number - 70%). That's actually an interesting proposal-- 100% of the time when I click on an ad, I didn't mean to and I try to close it before it has a chance to annoy me. Probably doesn't make sense on a large scale, but it's something to consider.
  - eytanlevit 14y ago
    I agree that some users might close the page or hit the "back" button before the $(document).ready() happens, but I can't believe that 70% of the people did that(taking into account that our ad was really targeted and highly relevant to the landing page).
    - alttab 14y ago
      and then we find out drunk or stupid people accidentally click stuff.

by reustle 14y ago

eytanlevit 14y ago

Happend to us too!! we first thought kissmetrics was wrong, so we built a logger that logged server side requests and a client side code that executes on load of the landing page, and we found that 70% of the server side hits had javascript disabled(or that hit the page and left it before the js executed, which seems improbable for such a large number - 70%).

tectonic 14y ago
What user agent was reported by those hits? This is fascinating.
- eytanlevit 14y ago
  It was a few months ago and we've already deleted the db table, we are soon relaunching with a new campaign, so once I get the data again I'll post it here.
Cushman 14y ago
> (or that hit the page and left it before the js executed, which seems improbable for such a large number - 70%). That's actually an interesting proposal-- 100% of the time when I click on an ad, I didn't mean to and I try to close it before it has a chance to annoy me. Probably doesn't make sense on a large scale, but it's something to consider.
- eytanlevit 14y ago
  I agree that some users might close the page or hit the "back" button before the $(document).ready() happens, but I can't believe that 70% of the people did that(taking into account that our ad was really targeted and highly relevant to the landing page).
  - alttab 14y ago
    and then we find out drunk or stupid people accidentally click stuff.