Casey Cheshire

Wednesday, all over the world, online marketers experienced drastic changes in their Facebook advertising performance.  Most advertisers saw large drops in both impressions and clicks.  The bigger the ad spend, the larger the drop, some as high as 60%.

There are many factors that go into advertising performance, and some immediately checks come up negative:

• Has the volume suddenly dried up? Are they all on vacation? This is not the case as these drops cross industries, markets, and demographics.
• Has the competition gone up, increasing the minimum bid? No sir, bid recommendations remain the same.
• Did your intern pause all of your Campaigns? No, interns are kept locked in the conference room.

All signs point to Facebook changing the way they serve ads.  Data collected since Wednesday shows no signs of return, leading most to assume these changes are here to stay.

While you may think it a bit odd for Facebook to suddenly change the way they do business, keep in mind they continually change their interface- much to the (dis)like of the majority of their users.  Those changes, however, typically allow people to revert back to the old style for a few days.

If you think it’s confusing, you’re not alone.  Reps at Facebook have been scrambling to come up with answers as large checkbook advertisers flood their phone lines.  I can almost imagine the hoards of online marketers yelling: “This wouldn’t happen on Google!”

I applaud Facebook for continuing to grow and mature it’s ad serving platform. They’ve got plenty of targeting power and are slowly learning how to enable everyone to use it.  My problem is with their implementation and lack of communication. If you’re the biggest, badest, fastest growing social platform- the future of the web, ACT like it.  Get a campus like Google, hire a beebop flute player, and seek measurable perfection in all that you do.

Potentially related, Facebook has publicly discussed their work on optimization the News Feed with a system called EdgeRank.  A great News Feed will make for better user experience, but the ad platform is what keeps the iguana fed at Facebook.  They need to devote more attention to the business side of the house.

Triage – What can you do? Test results haven’t come back yet.  In the mean time, here are a few potential band-aids:

• Ensure your bids are within the suggested range & test upping your bids.
• Create new ads with the same & new copy.
• Compare performance across multiple accounts & campaigns.

The way I see it, Facebook will either revert and reevaluate or adjust and inform.  My guess is that they’ll tweak what they’ve done- though there is a sense of urgency.  You’re spending less, and they’re making less so it’s going to be a working weekend at Facebook.

I also recommend adjusting your Facebook advertising strategy.  The system is changing and soon the new levers that affect performance will become clear.  Gear yourself up for a Facebook Quality Score, complete with it’s own set of algorithmic quirks and voodoo rules.  The positive side is that they’re moving toward Quality, which should benefit us all in the future.

If you’ve had any performance changes recently, please post them below:

I was checking in to Lingo, my local lunchery, on geolocation-social service FourSquare when lo and behold a trending location caught my eye: Heatpocalypse Boston.  Wiping away the sweat from my brow, I immediately checked-in.

Yes, 106 of us are currently baking in the Heatpocalypse Boston.  This new venue has had over 200+ unique check-ins and is a remarkably accurate description of the insanely hot weather we’ve been having in Boston lately.

This event is a funny reminder of how a common struggle- like weather, can unite us all.  If not for FourSquare, I might not have had proof that I wasn’t the only one sweltering out there.

There is a serious side too of course.  Dehydration can be dangerous so get yourself some water & drink up Boston!

I received an email from Charles Schwab (the bank, not the guy) today.

It started off with “We’re making some exciting changes that will make your online banking experience even better, We therefore request your to verify your location.”

Later it goes on to describe a “verification” that is needed, and has a link that says “Go To Verification Process” with a destination of: http://www.schwab-verification.com/public/schwab/home/welcomep.html

Here’s a screenshot of the email:

Looks relatively legit right?  A few red flags go off right away when anyone, especially a bank, asks you to “verify” something.  You’ve probably guessed already, that this email wasn’t from the bank.

What did the destination (www.schwab-verification.com) look like?  It was an exact copy of what schwab.com looked like.  How scary is THAT!?

Go Phish?

It’s called a phishing scam and it involves bad guys asking hundreds of people for their login information to online accounts such as banks.

The concept of phishing can be thought of by a big fishing net cast out to the sea.  The hope is that while most fish will escape, a few might get caught.

That fake Schwab message was sent to hundreds of thousands of email addresses.  The villain sending it realizes that a small percentage of people opening it will actually *have* an account with Schwab, and then a much smaller percent of account holders will actually fall for it.  But that’s okay because 1 big account may be all he needs to pimp out his evildoer lair for the upcoming year.

5 Phishing Scam Red Flags

1. Ask Not… This first one is key: No financial companies will ever ask you to do or confirm anything requiring login details online.  Verify, confirm, and words like these are instant flags because they’re requesting you tell the bank’s site what it already knows!
2. No Site Key.  Lots of banks (Bank of America for example) are now instituting Site Key images.  Before you log into your account, the bank will show you an image that you previously picked out.  If you go to log in and see the wrong image- or no image at all (when you know your account has one), stop!  This one helps stop phishers in their place.
3. Fake Urgency! OH NO. Our mainframe had a 409XB error at the same time your Debit card was used in Boca Raton, Florida- quickly confirm your details so we know your account hasn’t been compromised.  How about no?  If the issue at hand was *that* serious, they would call you.
   I’ve gotten calls before from a fraud team asking if I’ve been to Connecticut lately as fraudulent behavior was identified there.  Even these departments won’t ask you for vital information- if they do, ask for a number to call them back.  And remember, sending an email for something serious is like emailing all workers in a building that there is a fire and to get out.
4. Funky Destinations. Just like in the example above, the website I went to from clicking the link was not the actual website of the company that emailed me:  www.schwab-verification.com is not www.schwab.com.  This one is pretty clever, but you have to ask yourself why there would be a separate address just to verify- there won’t be!  Some URLs are a lot more blatant like: bankofamerica.verify.systemconfirm.ru   This is an example of a Russian website (.ru) with plenty of garbage thrown into the web address to confuse you- it’s definitely not a bank!
5. “English! Do you speak it?!” Samuel L Jackson says this famous movie line- of course, his version is littered with more colorful language…  If you actually take the extra 5 seconds to read a suspicious email you’ll be surprised at how often they’re poorly written.  Real companies, banks, and firms often have teams of employees who come up with multiple drafts of the same email in order to make it clear and professional.
   Here’s an example from the above email: “We’re making some exciting changes that will make your online banking experience even better, We therefore request your to verify your location.“  Seriously? You used a comma instead of a period and you THEREFORE request YOUR to verify?  Oh please!  If something like this ever left Schwab, whole departments would be getting fired as droves of investors ran for the hills.  “If you can’t write an email, how are you going to manage my money?”

Phishing scams are not new and sadly they are not going away soon.  Our best bet is to share what we know about them with friends and family.  As our world’s digital experience matures and fewer people fall prey to online scams, phishers may have to pick up real fishing nets and try a new career.

Facebook has a new feature! (gasp) And this time it’s for all of us digital marketers out there utilizing Facebook Advertising.  The new feature, which is still in Beta, allows you to know if the really expensive Facebook traffic you paid for actually converts.

The implementation is simple, and if you’ve already set up your Google AdWords for conversion tracking (and you should!) then it’ll look familiar:

<script src=”//ah8.facebook.com/js/conversions/tracking.js”></script><script type=”text/javascript”>
try {
FB.Insights.impression({
‘id’ : 123456789,
‘h’ : ‘abc123abc123′
});
} catch (e) {}
</script>

This will enable you to track contact conversions within the Facebook interface.  Even if you have your web analytics set up to track Facebook conversions this will put the information all in one place and save time on report generation.

There is also a handy guide to using Facebook Conversion Tracking.  They’ve done a great job detailing just about everything- except a pesky thing called a “Conversion Rate.”  (Oh boy!)

Facebook & Conversion Rate

A conversion rate can really look at any two factors, depending on what KIND of conversion you’re tracking.  It’s typically calculated with the number of successes divided by the number of attempts.  Within Facebook reporting, a conversion rate is the number of times the desired action (purchase, signup, etc) occurs divided by a modified number of impressions- or times your ad was shown.

It’s not simply Conversions/Impressions.

Believe it or not, Facebook adds in “Basis Points” to your Conversion Rate calculation.  They do this because simply dividing your 10 purchases by the 800,000 impressions is going to give you a crazy Conversion Rate of: 0.0000125

Rather than make room in their reports for at least 5 zeroes, they modify the number of impressions by DIVIDING it by 10,000. The result on your 800,000 impressions divided by 10,000 is now a manageable 80.

Facebook then calculates: 10 / 80 = .125 or 12.5 %

While it seems sketchy at first glance, they’re really only making the report a little easier to read.  Just remember you DON’T really have a 12% conversion rate!

Happy Converting!

If you haven’t been advertising on Facebook, you should definitely test it.  I’ve seen it work both really well, and pretty miserable.  There are a lot of factors, but one thing is sure- you won’t know how your audience responds until you start testing it!  At least now you can see how those pricey, highly targeted Facebook ads are performing within their interface!

I wanted to share a presentation I gave at the Inaugural Event of the Social Media Club NH.  That night, social media professionals in a variety of industries shared their victories and frustrations.  From health care to gov, and non-profit to business, it was an excellent view into the expansive reach of social media.

I was the speaker for Business.  One distinction I made during my presentation became apparent as I was listening to the previous speakers.  Health care and especially government have a ridiculous amount of red tape they have to contend with when attempting to build social communities.  However, once implemented, their goals of user engagement and community are relatively easy and straight forward.

Business on the other hand, has few if any restrictions, but has to contend with the big social media ROI question: “Does this make sense- now or in the future, with dollars and cents?”

The bulk of my presentation centered around lessons learned and a few key best practices for social media implementation for businesses.

It was an honor to speak at the event, I’ve embedded my slides below.  Actual speaking notes are attached to the slides and are visible if you visit the presentation on SlideShare.