« Facebook Developers Have Tons of Advertising Options
Is Facebook in a PR Pickle? »

Is Facebook Flyers Leaking Data?

Posted by Nick O'Neill on October 30th, 2007 12:35 PM

This morning I received an email from Markus Urban who notified me of an error within his Facebook flyers account. Apparently, Facebook was displaying ad data for another user’s account. As displayed in the image below, the data includes ad click-thru rates, cost-per-click information and the total amount that the person has spent. One interesting piece of this is how horrendous the click-thru rates are. While click-thru rates are mostly related to how good the ad is, the rates in the chart below are well below the estimated 0.04% click-thru rates that have been previously estimated for Facebook flyer ads.

While internal click-thru rates for Facebook are historically low, under their new advertising system, click-thru rates would be potentially higher given that they are targeted ads on less “attention consuming” websites. This is all speculation though. Whatever the case is, Facebook needs to figure out what’s happening with their flyer system that could cause this leaking.

One other interesting tidbit brought to my attention by Markus’ post is the fact that Facebook blocks all advertising that redirects users to MySpace. While speaking at SNAP Summit last week, Ami Vora, the senior platform manager at Facebook, could not comment on who Facebook considers a competitor. If there was anything to suggest that Facebook considers MySpace a competitor, this definitely does.

Update
Markus has since informed me that the bug seems to have been fixed as of this morning. It’s great to see that Facebook is responding quickly to any errors.

Facebook Flyers Screenshot

Posted in Advertising, News
Digg Icon Digg this article Del.icio.us Icon Save to del.icio.us Share Share on Facebook

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 at 12:35 pm and is filed under Advertising, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Viewing 6 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    I think the real story here is that the flyer with 10,000 impressions got clicked twice. Thats what Facebook should be worrying about...and there lack of privacy controls...
    • ^
    • v
    Wow, those are some bad CTRs. I have a feeling that it is largely related to the type of ads those are. "Save money with..." and "Get paid to shop at..." sound like the type of ads that people find horribly annoying. I would think that those ads would have fairly bad CTRs regardless of where they advertise. Not to mention that I'd be willing to bet the demographic of Facebook is not the type to click on those types of ads anway.
    As a sidenote, and somewhat of a plug, I just ran an experiment last week to test out the new targeting options they have for flyers. I ended with a CTR of a bit under 2%, which I thought was a bit high for my ad, but lower than I thought was the norm (which I was thinking was closer to 3-4%).
    • ^
    • v
    Jeremy: do you mean 0.02% or 2%? Big difference there. Do you have a write-up somewhere? I'm doing some Flyer experiments as well.

    When you're analyzing flyer data, you need to be careful as Facebook's algorithm is nuanced and self-adapting. In this case the affiliate marketer is strategically purchasing their flyers to minimize the CPC they have to pay (thereby maximizing profit). This can be done by creating large numbers of flyers and setting a low maximum CPC that is quickly reached. You're missing the point if you focus on CTR.
    • ^
    • v
    Chris: It was 1.073% (I had misremembered it as 1.7, hence why I said a bit under 2). There's a basic writeup with the results at the link below.
    http://www.southboard.com/blogger/2007/10/exper...

    I see what you mean about using multiple flyers in order to maximize the efficiency of the CPC, rather than focusing on CTRs. At the same time, though, paying attention to the CTR can be important to guage the effectiveness of the ad. If no one is clicking on it, it doesn't matter that it only cost you 5 bucks. Your money would be better spent trying to maximize how many people actually click on your ad, and can therefore be potential conversions, rather than just looking at ways to save on the CPC. If your ad is seen close to 10k times, and only one person clicked it, I'd think that you need to reevaluate what your ad is.
    • ^
    • v
    Apologies if this posts twice, as I typed it up once and hit submit, only to have it disapear.

    Chris: The exact amount was 1.073% (I had said a bit under 2% before as I misremembered it as 1.7). But yes, there would be a big difference between 2 and .02. I have something of a writeup with the results at the link below. It was more for humor than actual research, but it's still there.
    http://www.southboard.com/blogger/2007/10/exper...

    As for looking at CTRs and CPCs, I can see your point, but I'm not sure how much weight it'd have. While I understand that it makes sense to look at the CPC in order to maximize the efficiency of your money, if no one is clicking on the ads, it doesn't really matter. You may only spend a few bucks onthe compaign, and have it seen by tens of thousands of people, but it doesn't do you any good if your ad sucks and no one is clicking on it. The CTR is a good indication of the effectiveness of the ad. If you have a horrible CTR, then the potential to have conversions from the campaign would be incredibly low. I'd much rather have fewer impressions and a higher CTR. That means that my ad is effective, and that the clicks are more likely to be converted.
    • ^
    • v
    While it's true that those particular ads were probably not very compelling, I've tested a number of laser-targeted ads for very specific demographics - they haven't fared much better.

    And these are just CTR rates - we're not even getting to conversions.

Trackbacks

blog comments powered by Disqus