Deciphering FB's ad spend algorithm (7)
Interesting read on the FB dev portal.
This helps clarify (and yet raise more questions - any LOST fans here?) the FB algorithm in relation to spend, not quality/placement or Newsfeed vs RHS.
I know a lot of affiliates have had to get accounts in different timezones to have multiple "peaks" attacking all (waking) hours of their target demo. In Aus and other geographically voluptuous countries, if you don't want to use agency accounts (real accounts last much longer in my experience) you can get a good 3-hour separation (I have Sydney and Perth datacentre setups, you could do LA/NY if you're in the US). It's insane the sort of benefit you get even with 3-hour separation!
FB spends more than 60% of my budget (when targeting any geo) within 8-9 hours without fail. I've never seen even ad distribution. I've tried all sorts of bidding/budgeting and manipulation. The only way is to get multiple accounts in different timezones. It's still interesting to read their notes, and it makes sense. Facebook admits pacing is not accurate with very large demographics, and you will exhaust the ad spend at a rate that eclipses a would-be-even distribution.
Quotes from page in black, my notes in blue:
- Pacing is the control logic that determines how an advertiser's budget should be spent relative to time.
- Pacing ensures uniform competition throughout the day across all advertisers and automatically allocates budgets to different ads. I don't want uniform competition! I want to snoo-snoo my competitors (kill, not, erm...)
- Determining this optimal bid value is the core learning part of the pacing algorithm, which includes feedback systems to keep pacing on track. "My CPU is a neural net processor; a learning computer"
- It also avoid arbitrage opportunities for our advertisers. Fuck you
- This is important because advertisers who know when prices are lowest can't exploit the system at the expense of naive advertisers. You heard it boys, the one possible exploit of Facebook advertising has been sealed
- If the ad is over delivering, you might have a very large audience that is exhausting the budget really quickly. If that is not the case, you should file a bug on the support portal.
- Learning happens within a day.
Q: My ads are not pacing correctly, what do I do?
A: If the ad is under delivering: one reason could be that the bid price might be too low. Ensure that your bid is well within the suggested bid range in order for your ads to win auctions and secure placement. With competitive target audiences, you might find that you need to bid above the suggested bid range. Other reason could be that targeting is too narrow. If the ad is over delivering, you might have a very large audience that is exhausting the budget really quickly. If that is not the case, you should file a bug on the support portal.
Q: When I change my budget, will it impact pacing?
A: When the budget is changed pacing has to learn the new optimal bid, this learning process can take some time. During this process the bids are not optimal, hence the value is not maximized for the advertisers. (Emphasis added.) This is the reason why changing bid and budget frequently is not recommended.
Q: How does day parting and pacing work together
A: In the past, PMDs have offered day parting from their tools where they paused and un-paused the ads. This does not work well within the pacing algorithm, because the learning history is reset. We are working on releasing day parting functionality where pacing is implemented into day parting. (Hnggggg! Emphasis added.) When this becomes generally available, we recommend you using this native offering.
Of further interest:
https://developers.facebook.com/docs.../adgroup/#read
All possible ad review responses... apparently you can't promote Gucci Mane mixtapes...
This is one of the best FB posts I have seen in a while! I hope the FB private section is finalized soon because the discussion this post alone would generate could be of immense value.
Would love to do FB, too bad im in bed with google and I don't cheat 
Yeah we can gleam all sorts of stuff from their dev pages. Just the deny reasons alone are cool to read through - I bet some people have tried to sneak animated ads in, maybe amongst a few static duplicates of the first frame 
(the reviewers love when their ducks are in a row and they can go on an approval spree). Of course you'd need to stay under the file size limit for ads.
EDIT: not sure this can actually be sneakily done... I think FB uses mostly PNG image format.
I'm sure they store a super low resolution version that they serve. I've uploaded 2 meg files before just to see what would happen. They obviously will want to save bandwidth costs, and most uneducated people in photography can't tell the difference and won't be pixel peeping. Over trillions of impressions over the years, I'm sure it would save them shitloads of money. Therefore an animated gif's first frame is likely to be just rendered when uploaded.
Pretty surprised you can't advertise melatonin.
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