My first Facebook PPC campaign. Let's see how it goes... (40)
Hi guys,
Today I wanna create my first Facebook campaign and for sure I need your help.
I've picked 2 quick loan offers because they have good payout and decent EPC. Others with good EPC in my network and works well (as I heard) on Facebook are EDU related but the network won't approve me to promote them since I don't have history.
I read a lot about Facebook PPC, from this forum and other sources so I know at leat theoretically how to start.
But I have some question, hope you can help me:
1. How facebook allows direct linking? For ex. I tried to submit an offer from peerfly but it got disapproved because the main URL i linked (something like http://www.peerfly.com/blabla) the ad is not the same with the offer URL(something like http://www.offerrewards...)
2.How to target for people that need quick loans? What angle should I use? From quantcast seems that most are afro-american females, age 35-49 with low income. I can target suburbs of large cities, but how about the likes, keywords? I don't know what they do on Facebook...
3.Images. What images work for loans on facebook? I know that weird ones attract attention(and i have some ideas for photoshop) but I don't know how to start.
As soon as I'm prepared with all the info I will start the campaign and see how it goes.
Fuck, i cant get any ad variation to pass facebook verification. I still get :
The destination URL of your ad either violates Facebook's Advertising Guidelines or could not be reviewed. Before resubmitting it, please visit our Help Center for additional information and examples compliant with our Advertising Guidelines.
Can't direct link with Peerfly? Please help.
do you have your own tracking system?
it's a must.
Thanks for answering.
No, I didn't set prosper yet, i just wanted to see if the offer converts first (makes at least 1 conversion) and I use subids for tracking.
However, when clicking on dissaproval help link gets me to http://www.facebook.com/help/?topic=...ed_destination. There says that offers shouldn't be geo located, but this offer works only on US. There is a chance that the reviewer be outside US (since I'm from Europe) and he cannot see the landing page?
How can I avoid this?
Setup your tracking then bait & switch.
i set tracking202, same problem. I need to link to a different landing page than after submti go back and change the destination url to aff link?
Try setting up as a Facebook page and then switch
Originally Posted by crysper
Originally Posted by 2022
Not that it is a solution to your approval problem, but you NEEEEED tracking to dominate!
edit: oh I see now you have it up
good job 
I directed to a main offer website and submitted 16 ads, but just one got accepted...WTF?
It has the same content, headline, target..just a different image, but i don't think that's the cause(i still get that destination url violates blabla)
Should I resubmit again? this will be the third time, I don't want to get banned...
40 ads disapproved again... i think I should get used to it.
Facebook doesn't like tracking202 links?
I think, even if i put the main offer page link on each ad than change to aff link, they won't approve, it might be the landing page they don't like.
I will try same ads with different offer, to see if the landing page is the problem... I will still use tracking202 redirect links on the ad.
Later edit: seems that tracking202 is blacklisted by facebook...going to use prosper and try again
Welcome to the world of Facebook ad reviewers....
Originally Posted by crysper
I would suggest uploading 100 fake ads for a few days, and let your approval ratio get high again before starting again
Originally Posted by michaelza
Also, good job on moving to Prosper on your own domain. Try the bait and switch and go from there. If the offer is US only, you could ultimately also setup a geo targetting script so that US addresses go to the offer and EVERYTHING else always go to the main domain.
But sadly yes, FB approvals is a bitch. I will say I took a break from dating offers and have been focusing on gaming and such, and it's refreshing to see all your ads approved first try (as opposed to having image issues).
Anyway, hopefully now that you are setting up P202, you'll see an improvement. Good luck!
finally got all my ads approved... my domain and prosper202 did the job.
Took me one day just to upload the ads, wondering how many days will take to make profits from facebook
However, I think I made a mistake, the suggested bid was 1.5 and i put max cpc 0.70. I don't know if I'll get impression on that bid but we'll see.
Question: If I modify the bid, the ad is not going to get approved again right?
Originally Posted by crysper
Correct, changing bid is normal. Ads are in and good to go. If you don't get any impressions you can take one of 2 approaches. Bid up incrementally 3-5 cents at a time to see if you start getting traffic. Eventually you'll at least start seeing remnant traffic. You could also go and bid a couple cents above the minimum to get that initial burst. But watch your ads closely and make sure you put a manageable budget for the campaign. Congrats on getting your ads through and good luck!
Thanks guys.
I increased the bid to 0.99 and made campaign budget 35$ (i can't get over 1.02, says that the campaign budget is to low).
However, I was lucky enough that i got a conversion from 3 clicks, so the offer sounds good so far.
The traffic is still very low, got few hundreds impressions for some ads...should I increase the bid or wait? looks like I get traffic on very short intervals than stops.
It's hilarious, I get 0.01-0.06 suggested bid.
On one ad i get 0.01-0.01.. i know that's a bug but i don't get any impressions....even if i made the bid for some ads hire than $1.5.
Update:
First campaign :
Revenue: $10.50
Spent: $38.63
Conversion: 1
Clicks: 43
Profit: -$28.13
However, i couldn't find a good ad variation, the best CTR was 0.08% with a baby picture and 0.5 CPC. I tried to upload more "babies" but they continue to disapprove(even ad copy was approved before) say either the image is not related to the offer, the ad content not related to the offer or the offer is not allowed.
What's your advice, stick with this offers or not, should I try to resubmit few more times? The offers has 0.32 epc, if I manage to get a 0.2% CRT i think i will get profitable...however, i'm a bit worried that it didn't converted again after 40 clicks.
Originally Posted by crysper
Part of the reason why it's hard to get babies through is because of the Make My Baby offer affiliates graped for a while in the past. That offer used to get between .30 and .50 EPC and you probably need a CTR of .1 or higher to get your CPCs low enough to make it back out.
I pushed Babies pretty hard with ads like this which got me into heaps of trouble, but you get the idea get creative and find interesting weird images using stacks tutorial somehwere on here.
Originally Posted by The Angry Russian
Correct me if my information is incorrect, but it seems you're using baby pictures to lead to a payday loan offer? I don't see the connection between the two. More importantly, it seems Facebook has frowned upon the use of payday loans being promoted (I've seen a few slip in every now and then, but for the most part, payday loan offers are in the grey for obvious reasons).
Originally Posted by Mugga
The EPC is the network average and yeah, that's payday loan, but the first time all my ads get approved, including one with 2 babies which had almost 0.1 CTR. However, I think i'll let it go, 50 click and just 1 conversion and the problems with ad approval..i don't think will work.
Now I'm trying an auto reg kind offers and I hate when offer descriptions don't tell how they convert, i don't like to wait 1-2 days for my am to respond. I also don't like when I ask my AM what offers works for facebook he just throws me a list of top converting offers on loans, dating and gaming which the best of them don't allow social ppc and I could get myself easily from network's dashboard. I think when saying you have 2k to spend on your network and want to get serious a bit more attention to the response will have greater results even if I'm not so experienced.
Facebook prices are so damn high, for a 80k demo, 3-5$ suggested cpc...and gets impressions just when bidding to 1.20. I've tried facebook just for a day few months ago on same demo size but i don't remember having so high prices.
Even if I have my best at 0.12 CTR for auto reg offer i still get 0.8CPC and the EPC is $0.15..how the fuck i will make that profitable???
I saw somewhere in the forum saying that for a low payout offer you will see if it's working for just few bucks spent, but how can you achieve that when all the clicks are around $1, i'm the only one getting so high costs? 
I think I've read almost all posts on the forum related to facebook and applied the guides and tips, but to get impressions I need to rise the bid over $1, after getting impressions I need to verify every ad and pause the each ones who get first 1-2 clicks, otherwise the rest of them won't get any impressions to test. For 20 variations I need to spend at least 40 bucks just to get initial clicks...and if you don't get a decent CTR and no conversions for a $2 offer, how the heck to continue with that, I'm doing something wrong or this is the "right" yet hard road? I've tested 3 offers, different payouts (below 10), all have the same "system"...
Questions:
1.For what EPC do you look on your network when choosing an offer to try on facebook?
2.Is worth testing a $0.7 game reg offer with $0.09 EPC?
3.My network doesn't allow me to promote education offers like Scolarship 4 dads which has a good EPC, what networks has good EDU offers and let me promote as sonn I get in?
1. Don't even bother looking at network EPC. consult your affiliate manager on what the average EPC's are for people that are running the offer on your traffic source if there are any. It's been discussed here on some other threads too but network EPC's tend to be absolute shit and purely based off the pubs that happen to be running them and what type of traffic they use.. (example popular offer for PPV/mailing? prolly shit EPC's due to high click volumes)
2. Always worth testing offers even with low EPC's..(hell one of my most profitable campaigns on FB yet only had like a .12-.14 EPC) With those offers it's all about ROI and VOLUME potential. It's not as easy to get .05-.10 cent clicks on FB these days at least in the USA (HINT: International???) don't let FB's bullshit suggested scare you off. test the offer yourself hell even give CPM a shot once in awhile and see what you can do.
3. i'm sure some networks will chime in..
Originally Posted by scotchsales
I will go international to see how it goes, and yea, the clicks are much lower but still suggested over $1. I have a 200k demo for ca, uk and au for a 0.7 offer...i will start with 0.6 bid to see how it goes. I hope that 0.10 epc is much higher for social, even so it has a 12% conversion rate, I hope Facebook Connect registration is counted as valid lead.
an extra word of advice i can give is don't try to just look at the numbers and make them ad up based purely on click costs. Suggested on FB is high everywhere but with high CTR and even a couple dozen clicks or so you will see it drop very quickly. i like to try and get mine down as low as possible and then pause and restart my ad at a lower bid the next day. (not something you always want to do it all depends on the volume, CTR's, etc.)
If facebook has ya down with high click costs then ask yourself "what can I do about it?" They might be able to drive up click costs but they can't directly effect the conversion rates. So maybe test landers, test copy, test head lines, new demos, see if you can raise that conversion rate higher to make your numbers work. Just the mindset you need to have for a lot of social offers.
Last tip don't target CA,UK,AU together break them up into totally separate ads/campaigns the click costs, demos, etc. are too different and the data of running them all together won't be to helpful. (when i mentioned international before i wanted you to notice many non-English speaking countries are super cheap, but that doesn't mean you can't still use the language option to target English speakers.)
Thanks Scotchsale, your answers are really useful.
I have another question:
For example, if on first 4 clicks my ads has a 0.07 CTR than I should stop it? because i don't see(so far) it can get any better...instead if the ad has 0.9 CTR at first 4 clicks it's a possible winner, am I right?
well a general rule of thumb for most is that .09 or better ads are worth keeping, BUT at 4 clicks there is no way you have enough impressions to even determine if that ad is really going to perform at that level.
I know its tough and trust me i was guilty of this when i was a facebook newb too doing everything i could to get low click cost. You really need to let that ad run, experience different times of day, user views, etc. before you can make a judgement call. I don't know the demo size but 4 clicks isn't enough for any demo. set your budget to what you can to test and let it roll for a minimum of a few hours before cutting it loose.
If you get impatient you could potentially be dropping a perfectly good and profitable ad.
Originally Posted by scotchsales
For The other campaign (auto insurance) I found an add have 0.15% CRT after 15 clicks but still no conversion to that too, i want to see conversions before optimizing that ad and trying new ones. I stopped it and I will put other offer from other network and see if it converts.
PS: Seems that Hue change for images have a huge impact, especially if the main colors turns into a bright "radioactive" green.
UPDATE:
$250 spent made 50$ but not giving up.
Tested multiple offers but I gave up after seeing that doesn't convert.
I'm running a gaming offer now which is close to profitability, i think i'll break even in few days and 100 more spent(need to test more)
However, Today I learned 2 things.
1) You can't judge if the offer converts or not too early, maybe after 100-200 clicks throughout the entire day.
It happened that i got 9 clicks and 3 conversion and later, after 60 clicks just 1 conversion. Even so, is very strange because normally in other days i got at every10-20 clicks a conversion, hope the network didn't started to scrub. what do you think?
2)If you have high bid and low CPC due to good CTR after few hundred clicks, if you increase the campaign budget, the clicks will get much higher.
Happened to me, after doubled my campaign budget clicks were coming like crazy, the CPC jumped by 50%.... This happens all the time?
FB have surge of traffic send to you at first to test whether your demo likes your ads or not, during this stage, I will bid high, if you miss this, probably you get screwed, FB will presume your demo don't like what you have published....that what I noticed...
I just lowered the bid to 0.22 and I get 0.18$ clicks, however, my CTR dropped by 50% and obviously I get much less clicks.
This happens all the time? I think bidding low, Facebook shows my ad in lower quality positions/pages.
Fuck, I'm pissed of.
I thought I found a winning ad yesterday, got conversion 2x and better CTR...i didn't want to think much about the week parting. Now same ad has half conversion rate, almost same CTR but CPC got up from 0.17 to 0.22.
The thing is, i bid down to 0.19 and half an hour later I still get 40 clicks with 0.21-0.23. How the heck is that...i set the max bid to 0.17 and give 40 clicks at 0.22???
This happens usually?
get paybump, increase your margin
got already 0.05 bump.
And yea, that high conversion was mostly due to week parting not the ad, the ad is a little better but I still couldn't break even.
I've noticed discrepancy from my bid recently as well (actually several times in the past few months) I would account some of it to being delayed in the system. Technically the bids you make don't take effect "in real time" so even if you lowered your bid your could of gotten impressions to the higher bid amount or even gotten impressions that you just hadn't seen yet which factor in to your overall avg. CPC.. reporting is becoming worse with every update it seems. at least now we get frequency cap so i get to know how horribly they are distributing my impressions lol
Be careful on resubmitting as they may ban you. Facebook is a silly animal from what I gather ads in the evening get through alot easier than in the day as they outsource ad approvals after 5 pm.
You will get random approvals and disapprovals that is all part of the game as FB hates Affiliate traffic and would rather have brand advertisers paying $8 CPM"s
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