Comment by kposehn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kposehn | Hacker News Reader

The problem with the article is that the author draws a conclusion with far too little data, akin to signing up for NetFlix and saying it is a terrible service when the first movie doesn't buffer fast enough.

I've spent mid six-figures on Facebook CPC ads over the last several years and can definitively say that they work very, very well - depending on your use case. Mine is not the OP's use case (though I've sold a metric a-ton of SaaS on FB).

I advise everyone here thinking about FB ads to do the following:

- If you try it, dedicate a serious amount of money. Nothing less than $500 will suffice as you need to get statistically significant data across all your targeting sets.

- Focus very narrowly on your target market. Trying women age 22-29? Do that in your metro area only. Keep your targeting sets small so you have fewer variables to contend with.

- Don't lose your nerve. If you give up too quickly you'll know nothing.

Finally, I do understand the OP's frustration with click numbers from FB vs. GA. Don't let it get you down, as this is common on every platform. Optimize for your actual logged data and you'll profit.

You didn't read the article. The point of the article has little to do with the campaign performance and more to do with the forensics he/she did to show evidence most of the clicks are misclicks on android phones. If this is true it means even "successful" campaigns are paying this tax.

I read the entire article. My point is that even that small a spend does not denote the entirety of the click base quality.

The article is titled "Facebook CPC – Don't Waste Your Money ", I think it's fair for him to explain why it was not a waste of money for him.

^^this.

With every platform you're going to have some issues with click fraud. Ideally you figure out how to make your campaign work despite these problems. You focus on quality conversions that make a dent in your business. I agree that it sucks to have to pay for this bad traffic. If you spend enough or get an account rep, I'm sure they'd take a look at the report you put together. Its comprehensive enough that other sources I've worked with would probably credit you some traffic.

In the past, I've had some spend returned due to this issue from FB but its been quite awhile since i've even requested it.

For most Saas companies, retargeting and search will work best as they are solving a very specific problem/need. Its difficult to find the users with intent that drives them to convert to a paying customer.

This is OP, I'd admit there could be more data, what isn't shown here is the larger spend I did previously (but was not measured as "scientifically" which produced similar results). I'm doing a new campaign now, targeting only Desktop with a larger spend and will report back the results.

Ok, glad you are doing a bigger campaign. If I can help please ping me via email (for reals!)

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