Ask HN: Have you tried Facebook advertising? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Have you tried Facebook advertising?

4 pointsAvalaxy3 comments

Have you ever used Facebook advertising? What were the results (CPC, CTR, conversion, frequency)? How does it compare to other advertisement platforms you've used? What tips can you give me for effective low-cost campaigns? OP starts: I used it once for a survey. I spent $100 and received 109 clicks for that money (CTR 0.008%). Those 109 clicks resulted in 13 completed surveys, so a conversion of 12%. The frequency was 7.0 with a reach of 207840.

To be honest I was really disappointed. I expected a higher CTR (more like 0.01 or 0.02%) and a lower cost/click. It cost me nearly $1/click while I counted on $0.25~0.50/click.

I'm planning to use Facebook advertising again though, the geographic targeting is pretty good. Looking for some tips. Should I go for a higher frequency (Seth Godin says that frequency > reach in his book Permission Marketing)?

The image is the most important part of your ad. I've played around with copy, but the image will make or break your ad.

Ads to Facebook pages work better in my experience. I convert a lot of new fans through Facebook ads.

I'm actually driving a lot of traffic to an external site through Facebook ads. My current CTR is .061% and I'm paying $.44 a click for one particular campaign.

Facebook retargeting is also getting a lot of good buzz, but I have yet to use it.

Personally, I don't think a 12% conversion rate for your completed surveys is bad. Conversation rates have a lot of different variables. Your ad might have set certain expectations that your survey didn't support. Hard to say without knowing specific ad creative and survey topic.

What kind of images are good you think? Say I'm promoting my Windows 8 app - would the logo be good? Or rather a screenshot? Or something completely different?

(building a google analytics app btw)

And have you tried other services like adsense? Which one is better?

My unofficial theory is that Facebook prefers ads that make people sign up for Facebook pages — although maybe those conversion rates are higher because Facebook users like to do things on Facebook. But one thing I learned with Facebook ads is that you really have to play with the copy and the image to see what hits. With your ads you have to think of yourself as designing viral content rather than just ads:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57513266-93/ad-fab-hot-star...

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