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Comment by rodolphoarruda | Hacker News Reader

"Facebook is a large, inefficient engine for transforming electricity and programmers into a down-market place to sell low-value advertising"

"Low value advertising"? Well, not to my business at least, as it currently represents the second best ranked referring website. Customers who come to my shop always talk about the things we post to our FB web page.

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Right, things you post to your Facebook page, not ads you are actually buying from Facebook. You get to advertise for free by creating a page for your business and getting people to like it. It has a ton of value for your business, but you're not purchasing anything directly from Facebook.

We buy FB ads too. We attack in all fronts to drive traffic to our website.

Do your analytics allow you to differentiate traffic driven by your Facebook page vs. Facebook ads? I would be interested to know which was more impactful.

We use Facebook's own analytic tools for that. But we don't go down to the very detail of what each number there represents. We work one of two levels above discussing how we are going to invest our online advertising budget across the different websites (facebook, uol.com.br and alikes, and some bridal specific portals). Surprisingly enough, Facebook generates more results than the sum of all the other bridal portals we have our ads on. I'd say 10 times or more of each individual bridal portal.

What business are you in? From time to time our fellow participants on Hacker News mention that their industries are well served by advertising on Facebook, but I rarely see mention of which industries those are.

We sell wedding/party dresses and bridal accessories.

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