Lighthousewoman’s Blog

I ran my first Facebook ad last week………….. and very quickly I developed a serious problem.

I couldn’t stop clicking on my stats page.

I was completely obsessed….. I wanted to know who was clicking (and seriously, WHY??)…. I was fascinated – and pretty alarmed – to discover that I can track the actual page from which someone clicked my ad. Talk about cyber-stalking, this seemed to me like almost too much information. But it didn’t stop me… I felt like a super sleuth, and soon I was contemplating running a series of ads – changing one factor at time – maybe a word, maybe the time of the week, maybe the picture… in an effort to ulimately discover the secret of the World’s Most Successful My Ads Campaign Ever.

I suspect I have a long way to go. I’m not sure what good stats look like, but I’m pretty sure these are not it:

Name	Status	Max Bid ($)	Type	Imp.	Clicks	CTR (%)	Avg. CPC ($)	Avg. CPM ($)	Spent ($)
Light House Woman Blog	Completed	0.54	CPC	68,548	15	0.02	0.50	0.11	7.46
Totals				68,548	15	0.02	0.50	0.11	7.46

But not to worry – I’ve also discovered there’s a virtual universe of assistance out there to help me improve my advertising skills (and hand over more of my hard-earned cash). There’s a whole community online willing to offer their assistance – free or otherwise – to those of us trying to cure our addictions by achieving world domination through Facebook advertising. Here’s a page I found particularly helpful….NOW I know not to get into a bidding war over keywords… Bit late now…

I’ve also discovered that the online advertising community is divided into two camps – those who believe My Ads works, and those who don’t. According to the nay-sayers, Facebook so engaging that visitors to the site are far less likely to click on an ad than if they were browsing or googling elsewhere. So perhaps my pathetic stats are less to do with my serious deficiencies as an ad guru and more to do with an inherent problem in the My Ads model.

But it seems to me that F’book ads can uniquely target self-selecting demographic groups in a way even Google can’t replicate. That being the case, I admit I’ve never clicked on a Facebook in the 4 or so years of my Crackbook life… I have, however, started paying more attention to what pops up on when I’m on the site, and would like to share some outrage with the other engaged ladies out there who are being targeted with weightloss ads. At no stage have I ever checked a box on a profile questionaire that says ‘fat’. (Nevermind the fact that I’m currently eating a bag of popcorn for dinner – and that I just ate a piece off the floor…)

According to fellow My Ads Addicts, Facebook will soon up the ante. The solution to My Ads low CPM ratio is nigh – by targeting ads to Facebook members on partner sites through a combination of My Ads and Facebook connect will create a social ad network…….. JUST what I need. Now for the next $7 experiment….