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BS - I've watched both videos twice and more sophisticated targeting solves 90% of their "problems." How much facebook advertising have you managed? I hope it'

BS - I've watched both videos twice and more sophisticated targeting solves 90% of their "problems." How much facebook advertising have you managed? I hope it's a lot if you're going to call out "fundamental flaws" and "large portion of ad spend...likely wasted...on what is effectively fraud." I've managed many millions across a handful of companies. Has their been issues? Yes, just like every other channel. You're spot on about being jaded though. Wading through the masses of BS is a huge pain. 75% of the people probably give up, 20% outsourced to varying results, 5% nail it in-house or via finding the right partner. But that 5%-15% of potential advertisers that lock it down? That's 80% of the ad spend right there. One Expedia is worth 100,000 small businesses to Google. Google, Facebook, et al have all tried to simplify their ad products to capture more potential advertisers at different levels. But in doing so they arrive at a Catch 22 though... To make it simpler, they hide sophistication and advanced options. The very options that are needed to drive campaigns with meaningful ROI. But those options are also over the head of the SMBs. So what are they supposed to do?

unclebucknasty 13y ago
Regarding your question about my statement that a "large portion of ad spend is likely wasted on what is effectively fraud." Not sure what you want me to say here. I don't believe the author's experience is isolated, nor is that of others who have demonstrated/reported the same. Your suggestion that they should use more "sophisticated targeting" to circumvent fraud is odd. Targeting should be for optimization, not fraud avoidance. How about instead FB fixes the fraud problem? In any case, by your own admission, most people don't possess this sophistication anyway, so it follows that they would likely be significantly affected by this fraud problem. Hence, you haven't refuted my statement, but supported it. >How much facebook advertising have you managed? I hope it's a lot if you're going to call out "fundamental flaws" Really? OK. Well, personally, I have only my own company's test cases. But, I can read and I don't think it's a coincidence that my experience corroborates that of many others. I'm actually also paraphrasing you (in part) when I say it's fundamentally flawed. I think it's a pretty big problem if only you and your cousin Bob, along with two other people who live on a mountain somewhere possess the esoteric knowledge required to create a successful campaign. And, now you've explicitly stated some of the flaw, with this: "To make it simpler, they hide sophistication and advanced options. The very options that are needed to drive campaigns with meaningful ROI. But those options are also over the head of the SMBs" You don't see a very serious problem there? In general, what you're saying throughout your post just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. You gloss over fraud and lay out all of these problems with FB advertising, then you conclude that it's not fundamentally flawed. Instead, the problem is with the huge percentage of people who simply don't know how to use it. For what other product would this premise lead to this conclusion?
- blumkvist 13y ago
  And what you are saying doesn't make sense to me. You want to achieve meaningful results when competing with people who are vastly more prepared to you. Why do you feel entitled to making facebook work? The truth is you (and majority of the people who posted here) have spent negligeble amounts of money testing and have read very little on the subject and even less time on putting down a strategy. I have a newsflash for you - marketing is hard and you are not entitled to results, just because you throw $50 on facebook ads.
  - unclebucknasty 13y ago
    >I have a newsflash for you - marketing is hard and you are not entitled to results, just because you throw $50 on facebook ads. Interesting that you know how much time and money I've put into it. It's also, interesting that you know what other means of advertising I've employed and am using for COMPARATIVE purposes. Marketing is hard? No kidding. I have been marketing online for over 10 years and have driven well over $500M in sales during that time. Now, maybe you've done more than that with your FB ads, but I would say that I'm qualified to speak on my experience. >You want to achieve meaningful results when competing with people who are vastly more prepared to you. No. The person to whom I'm responding stated that very few people know how to succeed with FB's product. If FB is marketing a product from which the overwhelming majority of their customers don't get value, then something is wrong with the product. I'd think that simple statement to be obvious but, then, here you are. >Why do you feel entitled to making facebook work? Again, you know me so well. I don't feel "entitled", though Facebook certainly wants me to feel that way. Again, if the overwhelming majority of customers find the product ineffective, then there's a problem with the product or Facebook's positioning of it. I call that fundamentally flawed. You can call it a success. So, you say you went off and built a slide-rule, strapped on a rocket pack, and obtained a PhD in psychology and statistics, and an MBA in marketing. Now, Facebook Ads work for you. Great! So I guess it was me and the other 90-something% of Facebook's ad customers who were wrong after all. We should just do what you did. Listen, FB sells the product. Funny thing: they don't recommend the MBA, PhD, or even consultants. In fact, they hide important features because they are so unusable for the vast majority of their customers. This is tacitly misleading people into believing that what they see is sufficient for success with their product. So, FB itself is telling you there's a big problem with their product, and this doesn't even consider the fraud issue in the OP. But, you just carry on defending them.
ameister14 13y ago
If you're going to make me create a custom audience in order for my ad to be successful, don't also make me use or write a scraping tool to grab open groups to populate that audience. It's really a bad idea for Facebook, though it works for savvy advertisers. I stopped doing it because I don't really feel like it's a good thing to promote. Basically, I have to create the targets extremely specifically, and then Facebook lets me advertise to them. Unfortunately, I haven't had the same success with Facebook's pre-set targeting criteria. Facebook's advertising tools promote the page like system too much and are too complex for non-specialized workers, I think.

unclebucknasty 13y ago

Regarding your question about my statement that a "large portion of ad spend is likely wasted on what is effectively fraud." Not sure what you want me to say here. I don't believe the author's experience is isolated, nor is that of others who have demonstrated/reported the same. Your suggestion that they should use more "sophisticated targeting" to circumvent fraud is odd. Targeting should be for optimization, not fraud avoidance. How about instead FB fixes the fraud problem? In any case, by your own admission, most people don't possess this sophistication anyway, so it follows that they would likely be significantly affected by this fraud problem. Hence, you haven't refuted my statement, but supported it. >How much facebook advertising have you managed? I hope it's a lot if you're going to call out "fundamental flaws" Really? OK. Well, personally, I have only my own company's test cases. But, I can read and I don't think it's a coincidence that my experience corroborates that of many others. I'm actually also paraphrasing you (in part) when I say it's fundamentally flawed. I think it's a pretty big problem if only you and your cousin Bob, along with two other people who live on a mountain somewhere possess the esoteric knowledge required to create a successful campaign. And, now you've explicitly stated some of the flaw, with this: "To make it simpler, they hide sophistication and advanced options. The very options that are needed to drive campaigns with meaningful ROI. But those options are also over the head of the SMBs" You don't see a very serious problem there? In general, what you're saying throughout your post just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. You gloss over fraud and lay out all of these problems with FB advertising, then you conclude that it's not fundamentally flawed. Instead, the problem is with the huge percentage of people who simply don't know how to use it. For what other product would this premise lead to this conclusion?

blumkvist 13y ago
And what you are saying doesn't make sense to me. You want to achieve meaningful results when competing with people who are vastly more prepared to you. Why do you feel entitled to making facebook work? The truth is you (and majority of the people who posted here) have spent negligeble amounts of money testing and have read very little on the subject and even less time on putting down a strategy. I have a newsflash for you - marketing is hard and you are not entitled to results, just because you throw $50 on facebook ads.
- unclebucknasty 13y ago
  >I have a newsflash for you - marketing is hard and you are not entitled to results, just because you throw $50 on facebook ads. Interesting that you know how much time and money I've put into it. It's also, interesting that you know what other means of advertising I've employed and am using for COMPARATIVE purposes. Marketing is hard? No kidding. I have been marketing online for over 10 years and have driven well over $500M in sales during that time. Now, maybe you've done more than that with your FB ads, but I would say that I'm qualified to speak on my experience. >You want to achieve meaningful results when competing with people who are vastly more prepared to you. No. The person to whom I'm responding stated that very few people know how to succeed with FB's product. If FB is marketing a product from which the overwhelming majority of their customers don't get value, then something is wrong with the product. I'd think that simple statement to be obvious but, then, here you are. >Why do you feel entitled to making facebook work? Again, you know me so well. I don't feel "entitled", though Facebook certainly wants me to feel that way. Again, if the overwhelming majority of customers find the product ineffective, then there's a problem with the product or Facebook's positioning of it. I call that fundamentally flawed. You can call it a success. So, you say you went off and built a slide-rule, strapped on a rocket pack, and obtained a PhD in psychology and statistics, and an MBA in marketing. Now, Facebook Ads work for you. Great! So I guess it was me and the other 90-something% of Facebook's ad customers who were wrong after all. We should just do what you did. Listen, FB sells the product. Funny thing: they don't recommend the MBA, PhD, or even consultants. In fact, they hide important features because they are so unusable for the vast majority of their customers. This is tacitly misleading people into believing that what they see is sufficient for success with their product. So, FB itself is telling you there's a big problem with their product, and this doesn't even consider the fraud issue in the OP. But, you just carry on defending them.

ameister14 13y ago

If you're going to make me create a custom audience in order for my ad to be successful, don't also make me use or write a scraping tool to grab open groups to populate that audience. It's really a bad idea for Facebook, though it works for savvy advertisers. I stopped doing it because I don't really feel like it's a good thing to promote. Basically, I have to create the targets extremely specifically, and then Facebook lets me advertise to them. Unfortunately, I haven't had the same success with Facebook's pre-set targeting criteria. Facebook's advertising tools promote the page like system too much and are too complex for non-specialized workers, I think.