6 ms·

Do Not Advertise On Facebook Until You Read This

123 points by slaven 14y ago

iamdave 14y ago
I seem to be greatly misunderstanding the issue here, and thus I apologize in advance if this seems like a massive, and possibly dismissive oversimplification but the complaint here is that there are overeager users who are clicking on ads, not knowing what they're clicking, and because of this the author/campaign manager is owed a refund? Unless Facebook, using the logs they've requested can conclusively prove that these are bot profiles aimed at disrupting the Ad Platform (which is something I would assume Facebook would already be keenly aware of and taking excruciating steps to stamp out, as Ads play a big role in their bottom line), why exactly does the author feel he's entitled to a refund just because people click the ad who might not be interested in the product? Again, unless Facebook can show these were malicious bots or that their targeting algorithm has malfunctioned and displayed ads to profiles that do not meet the demographic criteria setup by the campaign manager and thus, ads are being displayed to users they shouldn't be and resulting in erroneous clicks, what's gone wrong?
- astrodust 14y ago
  If Facebook has developed a culture of rampant ad-clicking to further some other cause unrelated to your advertising then those ads should be valued accordingly. Imagine if in some Zynga game they had ads but rewarded users for clicking on them. Not interacting with, but simply clicking. Would you find much value in advertising there at all?
  - iamdave 14y ago
    Imagine if in some Zynga game they had ads but rewarded users for clicking on them. Not interacting with, but simply clicking. Would you find much value in advertising there at all? You've actually brought up a very valid point; I kind of hinted on this in my OP but it deserves some clarification: has Facebook proven so far that these ad clicks are in some way spurious? Granted, knowing what motivated the clicks is an impossibly tall order; however I don't see much difference in what you've proposed versus the many Pages that encourage users to promote more followers in promise of some sort of a rebate/discount/incentive with a brick and mortar establishment. The primary and most obvious difference here is that there isn't a cost simply for putting up a Fan page. However and ultimately, my original premise I think deserves just as much consideration as incentivizing ad clicks to boost leads: unless Facebook can show that these clicks originated from a source and can sufficiently extrapolate evidence that these sources are motivated to disrupt the platform, I do not understand the author's complaint.
- ghshephard 14y ago
  Because the clicks by these "clickants" are worthless, and shouldn't be sold. Somebody blindly clicking on ads has no value, and you shouldn't be selling their clicks. It's akin to selling advertising on TVs that happened to be fast forwarded/skipped on Tivo. If the advertisers are aware from DVR logs that fewer people saw the logs, they need to reflect that in reduced costs to the advertisers by reducing bill-rates over time.
  - iamdave 14y ago
    The Tivo analogy makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up, I figured initially that I was misunderstanding the point of the post and your analogy fixed it.
- anon808 14y ago
  I don't think the author is saying the clicks are malicious, just that they are lower 'quality'. Based on the authors experience he seems to be saying the intent of some facebook clickers is different than regular web link/banner clickers. He seems to imply the Facebook clickers have some other incentive to click other than to see the advertises website; and that incentive might be to collect 'likes'. And that actually makes sense to me, reminds me a bit of the incentivized clicks of the eagerly 00s, not worthless just worth a whole lot less than organic clicks. If Facebook has a lot of these clickers their inventory value becomes worth less.
  - alexlitov 14y ago
    Of course they were of lower quality, they were intentionally running their ads to people from the "Philippines, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh".
nl 14y ago
I suspect at least some of these "booklicant" users are people attempting to build up fake profiles that look real. They do this by liking a lot of advertisers, which makes their profile look more populated.
- endianswap 14y ago
  Thank you, I couldn't think of a scenario where individuals would want to automate ad clicking on Facebook, but this makes complete sense.
- jpalomaki 14y ago
  Very good point, I think this could also explain why a bot would spent time and resources "clicking" ads (I believe there was another post HN where it was suspected 80% of the click came from bots).
ghshephard 14y ago
I read though this missive - and the first thing that came to my mind was the definition that "more than six clicks a minute is considered invalid" - and I tried to recall if there was a time in the past year that I clicked on six display ads in a day. I then realized that, when I'm searching to purchase something on Google, I may click on half a dozen ads in a minute - but realistically, each of those has a chance at getting $20-$40 worth of revenue (and the potential, as in the case of monoprice, of hundreds, if not thousands of dollars of revenue after I discover the site) I'm wondering if anybody has done a definitive study on the conversion value of a "click" on google versus Facebook, both in terms of brand recognition, immediate conversion (purchase), and long term conversion (delayed purchase) - that study, if definitive, would probably adjust GOOG/FB by 10s of billions of dollars - clearly a leading indicator of future revenue.
- iamdave 14y ago
  I'm wondering if anybody has done a definitive study on the conversion value of a "click" on google versus Facebook, both in terms of brand recognition, immediate conversion (purchase), and long term conversion (delayed purchase) Probably not, but it sounds like a fun weekend project. I think you just gave me something to do this weekend :D Thanks
- erik_larson 14y ago
  That is a great point. If anyone does want to do the calcs ;), it's important to keep in mind the difference between what you do on Google when you are clicking around 'searching' for content, and what happens with these folks on Facebook. On Google, your intent is relatively clear since the advertisers bought ad space against _search_ terms...not perfect, but pretty good. On the other hand, Facebook is claiming that they can do an amazing job of targeting customer segments...which may be true, but it is also mostly irrelevant in this case since the intent behind the behavior is the only thing that really matters in cost-per-click advertising that costs more than a fraction of a penny per click. I believe the market will take care of the price once it understands the product that Facebook is selling - at least I hope so. In the mean time, Facebook is fleecing a bunch of advertisers, especially small ones.
- Tooluka 14y ago
erik_larson 14y ago
I wrote this blog posting. I am not claiming that these are bots or that Facebook is defrauding us in the strict legal sense. After a bunch of research, I believe they are real people, as Facebook asserted to me and to the BBC among others. However, I believe Facebook is misleading advertisers and behaving unethically by not disclosing this fairly widespread, unusual and costly user behavior, one that hits the campaigns of less sophisticated small advertisers particularly hard. The problem has two main parts: 1) The click behavior of these users is _extremely_ unusual and unexpected according to the beliefs of the advertisers and advertising experts I have shared these finding with. Most people think that 'no one clicks on FB ads.' So when they learn there are profiles of real people that click 5-6 likes in a minute, dozens of times a day adding up to thousands of times a year, they immediately exclaim 'no one does that, they must be bots, you must be wrong.' But they are real people. And unless you are extraordinarily careful (see here: http://wp.me/p2dKfK-7x http://wp.me/p2dKfK-7x), Facebook naturally charges the same for their clicks as for everyone else, even though their clicks are nearly meaningless from an advertiser perspective. 2) These real people were taught this behavior by the new Facebook timeline interface, which a) makes the number of 'Likes' extremely prominent, b) encourages rapid liking of ads by refreshing the ads immediately as they are clicked and c) uses these likes to change the content that appears in the stream of stories. Perhaps a better one of my postings to read is this one, where I estimate how widespread the problem may be from an advertiser perspective http://wahanegi.com/10-percent-of-fb-revenue/ http://wahanegi.com/10-percent-of-fb-revenue/. To save you time, here is the main bit, a quote from one of these users after I asked them why they like ads in batches of 5-6 throughout the day: "Yes, I do remember why I liked things in batches. Facebook suggests things for you to like in the right column on some pages. As soon as you click to like one of them, it replaces it with another suggestion. I’m quite happy to like thousands of things on Facebook as it improves the kind of stories and ads that come up in my news feed and again in the right column. I would rather see things I am interested in than things I’m not." Makes sense for him. But not so much for a small advertiser who just paid Facebook a few hundred or a few thousand bucks so that Facebook could use the ads like click-bait for: people aiming to hone their Edge Rank content preferences, people who are bored and enjoy choosing which ads they like best in the list, or people who want to get their Likes 'score' higher because it gives them a sense of accomplishment. Trust me, once an small advertiser learns that there are two types of people on Facebook, and they get charged the same amount for clicks from each, they are not happy. Especially after Facebook customer service gives them the Heisman. ;)
trung_pham 14y ago
I have a feeling if this thing does not stop spreading, then expect Facebook stock to drop by 50% on their next earning report... Advertisers will cut their budget and that will kill Facebook revenue. Well, maybe start a short position?
nhashem 14y ago
I haven't advertised on Facebook myself, but this is is an interesting concept. If it's broadly true and that Facebook essentially has two "classes" of users, then it's up to them to price them segment and price them effectively for advertisers. This reminds me of Paul Graham's essays about Viaweb's acquisition by Yahoo[0][1], and how Yahoo seemed mostly uninterested in PG's algorithms for Revenue Loop. To quote: "In 1998, advertisers were overpaying enormously for ads on web sites. In 1998, if advertisers paid the maximum that traffic was worth to them, Yahoo's revenues would have decreased." I remember when AdSense ads used to be images and Google replaced them with text links, essentially reducing the clickable surface area of the ads. This essentially slashed revenue in the short term with the theoretical long-term benefit of reducing accidental clicks and increasing the value of the clicks they did send to advertisers, who should then be willing to pay more. As a now public company, it will be interesting to see which path Facebook follows. [0] http://paulgraham.com/6631327.html http://paulgraham.com/6631327.html [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html
vibrunazo 14y ago
Can anyone here tell me if this bot problem is common on other ad networks, or is the 80% bot click rate much higher on Facebook? Because maybe it's just a common hard problem to solve for ad networks. Or maybe it's Facebook who specifically have a problem. If it's the former, then advertising somewhere else wouldn't solve the problem for advertisers. But I cannot know for sure without knowing if this 80% bot rate is common in others networks too or not. I do know that many people reported lower conversion rates on FB, but they usually attribute that to lower purchasing intent from real FB users, not from higher bot rate. Or are they simply mistaken?
- dangrossman 14y ago
  It's not common on other networks or on Facebook. This is likely an isolated incident. I've been advertising on Facebook for months and >80% of the clicks show up in my own stats, not <20%. If advertisers were regularly being billed for 5x the ad clicks they actually received, this wouldn't just be coming out now.
  - nl 14y ago
    I've done some minor advertising on Facebook too, and I've never seen anything like this either.
- Bill_Dimm 14y ago
  This article isn't about bots. The 80% bot stuff was from a different article posted yesterday.
yaix 14y ago
This is how you do it: (a) Estabish what you spend on ads per visitor. (b) Establish what you earn per visitor coming from ads. (c) Only if (a) minus (b) is positive, continue running the ads. However, Facebook should have a look at this issue. It is the reasong why Google's AdWords is so successful, and most other self-service ad programs fail. AdWords is very good in filtering everything that does not represent a value for the costumer (the advertising web site).
robryan 14y ago
I doubt many businesses have real direct measured ROI from their Facebook ads. Right now people are still happy to experiment with brand/ community building. Eventually though without that direct ROI and the social hype everyone is going to give up. There are a lot of businesses in the world to churn through but eventually, as a company like groupon for example are probably seeing, this drys up.
tylermenezes 14y ago
That first email is 2,500 words. I'd be really impressed if anyone from Facebook actually read through the entire thing. It's appropriate for a blog post, but not for an email.
- Cass 14y ago
  When it comes to the advertising giants, it's not a bad strategy to write a blog post but send it as an email first. Realistically, no matter how long or short your email is, you're unlikely to get a helpful response from either google or facebook to your problem, especially if that problem is on the scale of "You need to change your entire ad algorithm (and also give my money back) - unless you somehow manage to turn the issue into a PR problem for them, by, for example, getting it on the front page of hacker news. You're more likely to get on the front page of hacker news if you can show that FB is aware of the problem but doesn't care to make any changes, which you can do by posting the email exchange. And you're also more likely to get the HN readers interested in an email that's basically a meaty blog post than in a short exchange that goes "Your algorithm sucks and I want my money back. :("
patio11 14y ago
This is a new spin on an old phenomenon. For banner advertising, a tiny percentage of the population (< 10%) contributes a massive percentage of all display ad clicks (> 80%). She's disproportionately a lower-middle to lower-income older American female in the Midwest who plays the lottery and subscribes to Reader's Digest. Totally not joking. A word often used to describe this segment is "compulsive clicker." Online publishers are well aware of this and, well, do not go out of their way to highlight this fact on their rate cards. Instead they'll provide their audience information and often do not mention that they know their typical click is not representative of their audience. Given that they're the "whales" of the CPC business model, they're frequently not quality-priced down to zero, unless they so dominate an advertiser's campaign that the advertiser complains. There are related issues with almost all online advertising. One should be very attentive to the default settings at one's major advertising network of choice, because the default settings almost always group the prime rib cut of the attention market with the pink slime and sell it at prime rib prices. (Examples: there are strong differences in pricing with regards to user location. Many advertising platforms, ahem, make it very straightforward for American advertisers to advertise their wares to users in developing markets. All you have to do is not opt out.)
- pikewood 14y ago
  What is the reasoning behind this type of behavior? Is it that she is very susceptible to the techniques used in banner ads (animated dancing mortgage people, "one weird trick", etc.)? Or does she have some OCD behavior of clicking all the links on a page? In the OP's case, I can see the motive of the Like-collecting mindset, but with the compulsive clickers, I'm imagining someone who clicks on ads for no reason other than a compulsion to "complete the page".
  - jiggy2011 14y ago
    Could simply be that they are less familiar with the internet, people who have been using it for a while learn to filter out the banner ads to a certain extent. If you are less familiar with using search engines etc, clicking big obvious links on pages might seem like the easiest way to "surf". I imagine if you looked at one of these people's PCs you'd find at least 6 toolbars installed in their browser.
ben1040 14y ago
If you post an email chain, please, post the messages in timestamp order. It's a little annoying when you need to scroll all the way down to identify the beginning of the discussion, and then have to read from bottom to top to see the exchange as it unfolds.
- erik_larson 14y ago
  Sorry about that. At the time I posted this, I just wanted to get it out in the world and move on. I felt (and feel) that Facebook had already wasted enough of my time. If I knew that ten thousand people were going to read it in a single day, I assure you that I would have spent more time editing it to give you a better experience.
nathan_long 14y ago
I don't know how FB currently charges, but if it's a flat rate per click, I'd think a reasonable solution would be make it proportional instead: this user spent 100% of their clicks during time period X on you, whereas that one spent only %10. Then you would price based on the share of the user's attention you got, not on individual clicks. Seems a lot simpler than retroactively invalidating clicks from users who pass some arbitrary threshold.

123 points by slaven 14y ago

I seem to be greatly misunderstanding the issue here, and thus I apologize in advance if this seems like a massive, and possibly dismissive oversimplification but the complaint here is that there are overeager users who are clicking on ads, not knowing what they're clicking, and because of this the author/campaign manager is owed a refund? Unless Facebook, using the logs they've requested can conclusively prove that these are bot profiles aimed at disrupting the Ad Platform (which is something I would assume Facebook would already be keenly aware of and taking excruciating steps to stamp out, as Ads play a big role in their bottom line), why exactly does the author feel he's entitled to a refund just because people click the ad who might not be interested in the product? Again, unless Facebook can show these were malicious bots or that their targeting algorithm has malfunctioned and displayed ads to profiles that do not meet the demographic criteria setup by the campaign manager and thus, ads are being displayed to users they shouldn't be and resulting in erroneous clicks, what's gone wrong?

astrodust 14y ago
If Facebook has developed a culture of rampant ad-clicking to further some other cause unrelated to your advertising then those ads should be valued accordingly. Imagine if in some Zynga game they had ads but rewarded users for clicking on them. Not interacting with, but simply clicking. Would you find much value in advertising there at all?
- iamdave 14y ago
  Imagine if in some Zynga game they had ads but rewarded users for clicking on them. Not interacting with, but simply clicking. Would you find much value in advertising there at all? You've actually brought up a very valid point; I kind of hinted on this in my OP but it deserves some clarification: has Facebook proven so far that these ad clicks are in some way spurious? Granted, knowing what motivated the clicks is an impossibly tall order; however I don't see much difference in what you've proposed versus the many Pages that encourage users to promote more followers in promise of some sort of a rebate/discount/incentive with a brick and mortar establishment. The primary and most obvious difference here is that there isn't a cost simply for putting up a Fan page. However and ultimately, my original premise I think deserves just as much consideration as incentivizing ad clicks to boost leads: unless Facebook can show that these clicks originated from a source and can sufficiently extrapolate evidence that these sources are motivated to disrupt the platform, I do not understand the author's complaint.
ghshephard 14y ago
Because the clicks by these "clickants" are worthless, and shouldn't be sold. Somebody blindly clicking on ads has no value, and you shouldn't be selling their clicks. It's akin to selling advertising on TVs that happened to be fast forwarded/skipped on Tivo. If the advertisers are aware from DVR logs that fewer people saw the logs, they need to reflect that in reduced costs to the advertisers by reducing bill-rates over time.
- iamdave 14y ago
  The Tivo analogy makes sense. Thanks for clearing that up, I figured initially that I was misunderstanding the point of the post and your analogy fixed it.
anon808 14y ago
I don't think the author is saying the clicks are malicious, just that they are lower 'quality'. Based on the authors experience he seems to be saying the intent of some facebook clickers is different than regular web link/banner clickers. He seems to imply the Facebook clickers have some other incentive to click other than to see the advertises website; and that incentive might be to collect 'likes'. And that actually makes sense to me, reminds me a bit of the incentivized clicks of the eagerly 00s, not worthless just worth a whole lot less than organic clicks. If Facebook has a lot of these clickers their inventory value becomes worth less.
- alexlitov 14y ago
  Of course they were of lower quality, they were intentionally running their ads to people from the "Philippines, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh".

nl 14y ago

I suspect at least some of these "booklicant" users are people attempting to build up fake profiles that look real. They do this by liking a lot of advertisers, which makes their profile look more populated.

endianswap 14y ago
Thank you, I couldn't think of a scenario where individuals would want to automate ad clicking on Facebook, but this makes complete sense.
jpalomaki 14y ago
Very good point, I think this could also explain why a bot would spent time and resources "clicking" ads (I believe there was another post HN where it was suspected 80% of the click came from bots).

ghshephard 14y ago

I read though this missive - and the first thing that came to my mind was the definition that "more than six clicks a minute is considered invalid" - and I tried to recall if there was a time in the past year that I clicked on six display ads in a day. I then realized that, when I'm searching to purchase something on Google, I may click on half a dozen ads in a minute - but realistically, each of those has a chance at getting $20-$40 worth of revenue (and the potential, as in the case of monoprice, of hundreds, if not thousands of dollars of revenue after I discover the site) I'm wondering if anybody has done a definitive study on the conversion value of a "click" on google versus Facebook, both in terms of brand recognition, immediate conversion (purchase), and long term conversion (delayed purchase) - that study, if definitive, would probably adjust GOOG/FB by 10s of billions of dollars - clearly a leading indicator of future revenue.

iamdave 14y ago
I'm wondering if anybody has done a definitive study on the conversion value of a "click" on google versus Facebook, both in terms of brand recognition, immediate conversion (purchase), and long term conversion (delayed purchase) Probably not, but it sounds like a fun weekend project. I think you just gave me something to do this weekend :D Thanks
erik_larson 14y ago
That is a great point. If anyone does want to do the calcs ;), it's important to keep in mind the difference between what you do on Google when you are clicking around 'searching' for content, and what happens with these folks on Facebook. On Google, your intent is relatively clear since the advertisers bought ad space against _search_ terms...not perfect, but pretty good. On the other hand, Facebook is claiming that they can do an amazing job of targeting customer segments...which may be true, but it is also mostly irrelevant in this case since the intent behind the behavior is the only thing that really matters in cost-per-click advertising that costs more than a fraction of a penny per click. I believe the market will take care of the price once it understands the product that Facebook is selling - at least I hope so. In the mean time, Facebook is fleecing a bunch of advertisers, especially small ones.
Tooluka 14y ago

erik_larson 14y ago

I wrote this blog posting. I am not claiming that these are bots or that Facebook is defrauding us in the strict legal sense. After a bunch of research, I believe they are real people, as Facebook asserted to me and to the BBC among others. However, I believe Facebook is misleading advertisers and behaving unethically by not disclosing this fairly widespread, unusual and costly user behavior, one that hits the campaigns of less sophisticated small advertisers particularly hard. The problem has two main parts: 1) The click behavior of these users is _extremely_ unusual and unexpected according to the beliefs of the advertisers and advertising experts I have shared these finding with. Most people think that 'no one clicks on FB ads.' So when they learn there are profiles of real people that click 5-6 likes in a minute, dozens of times a day adding up to thousands of times a year, they immediately exclaim 'no one does that, they must be bots, you must be wrong.' But they are real people. And unless you are extraordinarily careful (see here: http://wp.me/p2dKfK-7x http://wp.me/p2dKfK-7x), Facebook naturally charges the same for their clicks as for everyone else, even though their clicks are nearly meaningless from an advertiser perspective. 2) These real people were taught this behavior by the new Facebook timeline interface, which a) makes the number of 'Likes' extremely prominent, b) encourages rapid liking of ads by refreshing the ads immediately as they are clicked and c) uses these likes to change the content that appears in the stream of stories. Perhaps a better one of my postings to read is this one, where I estimate how widespread the problem may be from an advertiser perspective http://wahanegi.com/10-percent-of-fb-revenue/ http://wahanegi.com/10-percent-of-fb-revenue/. To save you time, here is the main bit, a quote from one of these users after I asked them why they like ads in batches of 5-6 throughout the day: "Yes, I do remember why I liked things in batches. Facebook suggests things for you to like in the right column on some pages. As soon as you click to like one of them, it replaces it with another suggestion. I’m quite happy to like thousands of things on Facebook as it improves the kind of stories and ads that come up in my news feed and again in the right column. I would rather see things I am interested in than things I’m not." Makes sense for him. But not so much for a small advertiser who just paid Facebook a few hundred or a few thousand bucks so that Facebook could use the ads like click-bait for: people aiming to hone their Edge Rank content preferences, people who are bored and enjoy choosing which ads they like best in the list, or people who want to get their Likes 'score' higher because it gives them a sense of accomplishment. Trust me, once an small advertiser learns that there are two types of people on Facebook, and they get charged the same amount for clicks from each, they are not happy. Especially after Facebook customer service gives them the Heisman. ;)

trung_pham 14y ago

I have a feeling if this thing does not stop spreading, then expect Facebook stock to drop by 50% on their next earning report... Advertisers will cut their budget and that will kill Facebook revenue. Well, maybe start a short position?

nhashem 14y ago

I haven't advertised on Facebook myself, but this is is an interesting concept. If it's broadly true and that Facebook essentially has two "classes" of users, then it's up to them to price them segment and price them effectively for advertisers. This reminds me of Paul Graham's essays about Viaweb's acquisition by Yahoo[0][1], and how Yahoo seemed mostly uninterested in PG's algorithms for Revenue Loop. To quote: "In 1998, advertisers were overpaying enormously for ads on web sites. In 1998, if advertisers paid the maximum that traffic was worth to them, Yahoo's revenues would have decreased." I remember when AdSense ads used to be images and Google replaced them with text links, essentially reducing the clickable surface area of the ads. This essentially slashed revenue in the short term with the theoretical long-term benefit of reducing accidental clicks and increasing the value of the clicks they did send to advertisers, who should then be willing to pay more. As a now public company, it will be interesting to see which path Facebook follows. [0] http://paulgraham.com/6631327.html http://paulgraham.com/6631327.html [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html http://www.paulgraham.com/yahoo.html

vibrunazo 14y ago

Can anyone here tell me if this bot problem is common on other ad networks, or is the 80% bot click rate much higher on Facebook? Because maybe it's just a common hard problem to solve for ad networks. Or maybe it's Facebook who specifically have a problem. If it's the former, then advertising somewhere else wouldn't solve the problem for advertisers. But I cannot know for sure without knowing if this 80% bot rate is common in others networks too or not. I do know that many people reported lower conversion rates on FB, but they usually attribute that to lower purchasing intent from real FB users, not from higher bot rate. Or are they simply mistaken?

dangrossman 14y ago
It's not common on other networks or on Facebook. This is likely an isolated incident. I've been advertising on Facebook for months and >80% of the clicks show up in my own stats, not <20%. If advertisers were regularly being billed for 5x the ad clicks they actually received, this wouldn't just be coming out now.
- nl 14y ago
  I've done some minor advertising on Facebook too, and I've never seen anything like this either.
Bill_Dimm 14y ago
This article isn't about bots. The 80% bot stuff was from a different article posted yesterday.

yaix 14y ago

This is how you do it: (a) Estabish what you spend on ads per visitor. (b) Establish what you earn per visitor coming from ads. (c) Only if (a) minus (b) is positive, continue running the ads. However, Facebook should have a look at this issue. It is the reasong why Google's AdWords is so successful, and most other self-service ad programs fail. AdWords is very good in filtering everything that does not represent a value for the costumer (the advertising web site).

robryan 14y ago

I doubt many businesses have real direct measured ROI from their Facebook ads. Right now people are still happy to experiment with brand/ community building. Eventually though without that direct ROI and the social hype everyone is going to give up. There are a lot of businesses in the world to churn through but eventually, as a company like groupon for example are probably seeing, this drys up.

tylermenezes 14y ago

That first email is 2,500 words. I'd be really impressed if anyone from Facebook actually read through the entire thing. It's appropriate for a blog post, but not for an email.

Cass 14y ago
When it comes to the advertising giants, it's not a bad strategy to write a blog post but send it as an email first. Realistically, no matter how long or short your email is, you're unlikely to get a helpful response from either google or facebook to your problem, especially if that problem is on the scale of "You need to change your entire ad algorithm (and also give my money back) - unless you somehow manage to turn the issue into a PR problem for them, by, for example, getting it on the front page of hacker news. You're more likely to get on the front page of hacker news if you can show that FB is aware of the problem but doesn't care to make any changes, which you can do by posting the email exchange. And you're also more likely to get the HN readers interested in an email that's basically a meaty blog post than in a short exchange that goes "Your algorithm sucks and I want my money back. :("

patio11 14y ago

This is a new spin on an old phenomenon. For banner advertising, a tiny percentage of the population (< 10%) contributes a massive percentage of all display ad clicks (> 80%). She's disproportionately a lower-middle to lower-income older American female in the Midwest who plays the lottery and subscribes to Reader's Digest. Totally not joking. A word often used to describe this segment is "compulsive clicker." Online publishers are well aware of this and, well, do not go out of their way to highlight this fact on their rate cards. Instead they'll provide their audience information and often do not mention that they know their typical click is not representative of their audience. Given that they're the "whales" of the CPC business model, they're frequently not quality-priced down to zero, unless they so dominate an advertiser's campaign that the advertiser complains. There are related issues with almost all online advertising. One should be very attentive to the default settings at one's major advertising network of choice, because the default settings almost always group the prime rib cut of the attention market with the pink slime and sell it at prime rib prices. (Examples: there are strong differences in pricing with regards to user location. Many advertising platforms, ahem, make it very straightforward for American advertisers to advertise their wares to users in developing markets. All you have to do is not opt out.)

pikewood 14y ago
What is the reasoning behind this type of behavior? Is it that she is very susceptible to the techniques used in banner ads (animated dancing mortgage people, "one weird trick", etc.)? Or does she have some OCD behavior of clicking all the links on a page? In the OP's case, I can see the motive of the Like-collecting mindset, but with the compulsive clickers, I'm imagining someone who clicks on ads for no reason other than a compulsion to "complete the page".
- jiggy2011 14y ago
  Could simply be that they are less familiar with the internet, people who have been using it for a while learn to filter out the banner ads to a certain extent. If you are less familiar with using search engines etc, clicking big obvious links on pages might seem like the easiest way to "surf". I imagine if you looked at one of these people's PCs you'd find at least 6 toolbars installed in their browser.

ben1040 14y ago

If you post an email chain, please, post the messages in timestamp order. It's a little annoying when you need to scroll all the way down to identify the beginning of the discussion, and then have to read from bottom to top to see the exchange as it unfolds.

erik_larson 14y ago
Sorry about that. At the time I posted this, I just wanted to get it out in the world and move on. I felt (and feel) that Facebook had already wasted enough of my time. If I knew that ten thousand people were going to read it in a single day, I assure you that I would have spent more time editing it to give you a better experience.

nathan_long 14y ago

I don't know how FB currently charges, but if it's a flat rate per click, I'd think a reasonable solution would be make it proportional instead: this user spent 100% of their clicks during time period X on you, whereas that one spent only %10. Then you would price based on the share of the user's attention you got, not on individual clicks. Seems a lot simpler than retroactively invalidating clicks from users who pass some arbitrary threshold.