Casey Cheshire

Facebook advertising is hyper targeted and as a result is often much more expensive than the Google Content network.  It’s important to have solid reporting in place so you can make sense of which campaigns are winners.

Facebook has gone through substantial growing pains as they develop their ad network.  From reporting errors to actually doing away with website based conversion reporting (it was too much to support)- it’s not your grandma’s ad network!

There are new social actions that can take place on Facebook ads such as a Like or an RSVP.  The resulting advertising performance report is a mish-mosh (yes, I said it) of trendy new terms that can both overlap and exclude adjacent stats.  It’s then left to us to translate the results into business speak.

The final bit of challenge is that until recently, not everyone at Facebook knew exactly what each stat was or how they were related.  So I’d Google Search the heck out of the situation- coming up with less than helpful docs, like the Facebook Ads Report.  No offense to FB but the thing was definitely created by someone who’s never had to calculate a CPL for a Facebook ad campaign.

There is a help file that gives the run-down of *most* terms in your Facebook Advertising Performance Report. Go there for definitions of things like Impressions & Spent. Just in case you didn’t know.   To their credit they do label Social Conversions- which we’ll expand on in a second.  Conversions, though, is neglected- leading everyone to wonder which conversion this column refers to…

The rumor is true: Facebook is down.  Or was, depending on when you read this.

But not the Facebook blog: http://blog.facebook.com/ It’s still churning away, doing relatively nothing- probably because nobody really reads the Facebook blog…

Over 300 servers don’t really matter much right now do they?

WHY IS/was FACEBOOK DOWN?

Al-Qaeda is claiming responsibility on their Twitter username.  But did they really do it?  In the same week that a 17 year old Australian kid unlocked a Pandora’s box of whammy on Twitter, it’s not too hard to picture a 13 year old pressing Control Alt Delete and somehow putting out the lights on facebook.com.

So what does this mean for you and me?  Not much really.

What does it mean for World Peace & Saving the Planet? Not much either.

Some guy, somewhere, will flip a switch- or write some impressive code and fix this situation.  Until then, we wait with baited breath and try to remember our MySpace password.

UPDATE: I’ve permanently forgotten my MySpace password and the email I used it long gone.

UPDATE UPDATE: Facebook is back up.  Yay for world procrastination!

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:

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!