Anyone ever use FB’s ad service? Basically, from what I understand, for $$ you can boost a post from you page. The setup allows you to target countries, age and gender demos, etc. I’ve used it a few times, but the results are disappointing, at least as far as I can make out. Ex, boosted an update about a U-boat related game, specified Germany, UK, France, US, and Canada. Got a few clicks, and 34 Likes, but almost all are from India, the Middle East, and Philippine/Thailand Asian countries. Almost all are 18ys old or less, and most are non-English speakers. When I look at their FB profiles, I get the feeling I have seen them before, say, in the spam posts we remove daily from the forums.
So, anyone have any FB boost info or experience, I’m really curious. Is this what FB’s revenue model is going to be based on, I don’t see how it will be sustainable–I can’t see following up with any future boosts for these results.
I’ve done it a few times for posts I want more visible. My blog did get several hundred extra views out of it, if not a few thousand, so I can’t really complain.
My wife runs a non-profit workshop and uses facebook boosts to target folks within a days drive who have shown interests in obtaining the type of training the workshop offers. She can attribute specific growth in attendance back to those boosted posts (and individual ads). Compared to the ad costs in specialty publications facebook boosts have been very cost effective for her.
She probably knows a lot more than me about how to target the ads. When I say “Germany” I get “Indonesia”. Ask her what the trick is. Where do you designate “a day’s drive”?
There is a good discussion on hacker news as well. The TL;DR seems to be, you have to be ultra precise with Facebook targeting or you get sucked into foreign link / like weirdnesses.
From the first article, the manner in which the FB rep speaks, it sounds like Facebook’s Global Marketing Solution team is a marketing click farm… outsourced clerks somewhere selling the system. Really doesn’t sound too promising for FB’s long term revenue model. I’m done with FB advertising from my few attempts, and lacking any faith in FB’s credibility. Too fishy.
