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Comment by atmosx | Hacker News Reader

I created a secondary account only to handle our pharmacy's facebook page to promote our brick and stones shop. There's no eshop yet, so I tried to run ads (spend about 30 EUR so far), but the targeting is awfully off the mark. I didn't spam any of my friends, tried just to use ads. Results are lousy. I targeted a specific Greek city, surrounding areas and specific ages and all I get are 'likes' from people in other cities, which have zero value to me at the moment. So in a sense I'm just waisting money.

I don't know if this new system will be available for small shops, but the current system for narrow areas (> 50k inhabitants) doesn't seem to work properly.

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Facebook ads generally seems... weird. Even the ads on Facebook itself is very often plain wrong.

That's not to say that Facebooks ads won't work in some or most cases, but there are definitivly case where they are surprisingly wrong. For me personally I don't recall ever seeing an ad on Facebook where I felt that they where targeting me directly.

It might be that the only interesting piece of info about me is that I'm male and above a certain age. I would just think that given what Facebook knows about me they would be able to target my much much better.

Currently the company that does product targeting the best seems to be Amazon, but only in the books department.

Its because Facebook can't afford to not show you an ad. So, when no one specific is paying them, you get lowest-common-denominatored.

It would be interesting to collect ad statistics from a broad range of Facebook accounts to see what they do get shown, since it would speak volumes about who's actually paying them.

That would be an interesting way to turn the tables. We are on their platform so the user data is theirs but we are also on their platform so the ad data is ours. Of course, this would need an app (or plugin or whatever they are called in Facebook-land) and a critical mass of people to install it.

I believe I would reactivate my account just to partake in this. Turning the tables sounds fun. Mine the data of the data miners.

I am almost certain that FB would put a stop to it though, as hypocritical as it may be.

Yeah I don't even look at them anymore. They feel like they aren't targeted to me at all. I get adverts for tax rebates for uniformed workers (I work as a web developer which is listed on my profile) and 'Barclay's investment opportunities' despite having neither the time nor money at the moment to invest in anything.

i always rejoice when google shows me adds for tampoons or perfume, just because it shows that the add targeting stuff is not perfect.

That's because generally people doesn't find any value in liking a pharmacy facebook page. If you're doing a clearance sale & run an ad to promote it, the result might turn out differently.

I did this too. Run a campaign about a short time offer just to test the waters, spend about 12€ in 48 hours, almost 2.5k saw the add, 17 clicked on the add, 2 of them"liked" the add.

The thing is that I dont know how to increase the page fans and run successful add campaigns wothout literally spamming everyone, which is something id rather avoid. Also i would to have 500 fans which arw i terested in the products then 1000 friends who liked the page because of me, but are not interested. Anyway, i will write a blog post in future woth specific numbers:budget etc.

Try going to Facebook and turn of any adblockers, then see if their ads actually advertise products you want.

If you are single you end up with ads for crappy dating sites, if you are not you get ads for child care products (likely also crap, or at least overprized).

Why? Because the crappy services are the only services where it makes sense to advertise on facebook.

Oh WOW. 30 euro and no results? Facebook ads don't work!!!!

Oh WOW. 30 euro and no results? Facebook ads don't work!!!!

Do you really need to be so snarky to make your point? It makes it unpleasant for everyone else to browse comments.

Re. your point, if you want to dip your toe in the water to see if FB ads work for you, then how much do you need to spend? I think starting at < €100 is reasonable.

Yeah, I'm just cranky before my coffee. It's my bad.

It's not a matter of total spend. Advertising, and marketing in general is about a lot of tests. The best way to approach it is to read a lot of material beforehand. Then map out the outcomes you want out of the advertising. Figure out what your KPIs are, set goals for those KPIs based on what you've read. Then set a daily budget according to your goals. And start running tests. After a month you can look at your results and see what worked, what didn't and you can start thinking why those things happened or what didn't happen.

The budget is something specific for every individual business. You can't really say, you need $X to get started. It is not an easy process. That's why I sometimes overreact to statements like OP's. Advertising is not something you can do in 15 minutes before bed. You need to educate yourself, be dedicated and persistent to make it work continuesly.

If you want to make it work, I suggest Neil Petel's quicksprout university for a very, very basic introduction.

http://www.quicksprout.com/university/

I'm a bit confused as to how to read your statement. atmosx simply said that from what s/he saw, the ads ignored the targeting settings.

That suggests a problem that is not fixed by user education, testing or throwing bigger budgets at it.

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