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Whitelisted Advertiser on Facebook for Online Dating: Any Experiences? (21)

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We have never done dating as a vertical (for a wide range of reasons), but over the past few weeks, 3 of the top 5 mainstream online dating companies have asked us if we would be willing to serve as a whitelisted advertiser on their behalf on Facebook.

Does anyone else have any experience in marketing on Facebook as a whitelisted agency advertiser for mainstream dating post Facebook crackdown 2014?

I would assume that compared to 2013

but I would love to hear any on the ground experiences.

Once again, this is for mainstream dating (we don't do any adult activities).

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ask charles ngo, he knows

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Just to clarify, is this for whitelisted, fully compliant advertising or for "cloaked" adult campaigns?

We don't do any adult or cloaked campaigns.

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Competition is less, but it is getting progressively expensive each month to advertise on FB. I think the rise in CPC is across the board though and not just specific to dating ads.

This is the latest info I got from my dating account rep:

We have been vetting data over the past 4 months within the dating vertical and are excited with the trend so far. However, we still have further to go in raising the overall quality within the category. We still see that some dating partners have much higher quality ads than others and we still have areas where we are receiving negative feedback about the ads on our platform.

To help raise the minimum bar, we are starting more strict enforcement of our current policies for ads within the dating vertical. We are most focused on ensuring high-quality creatives and based on feedback are starting in the following areas:

• Images
- More strict standards with respect to "sexual" images. Images that use unusual poses (e.g. a person lying on a bed), large amounts of cleavage or exposed skin to make the ad more sexualized are not allowed.
- More strict standards with respect to "low quality" images. Based on feedback we are no longer going to allow selfies (i.e. images where you can see a person photographing themselves) or images that are blurry or pixelated.

• Ad Copy
- More strict standards with respect to referencing user attributes. We already disallow direct or implied references to user attributes within 10 protected categories (https://www.facebook.com/help/249045061790375) -- we are expanding this to disallow direct questions about any user attribute. This includes any callouts around age either of the targeted person or the people on your service. We have consistently found that ads that focus on the product or service rather than question the user receive significantly less negative feedback (e.g. "Are you single?" would no longer be allowed, but "Meet singles on <dating service>!" is fine).

- More strict standards with respect to "spammy" text. The current ad guideline that "… ad text must include proper grammar and the use of all symbols, numbers, or letters must adhere to the true meaning of the symbol" will be more strictly enforced. Unnecessary use of symbols or words in all-caps will not be allowed (e.g. "[Meet Singles Here]]]!", "Find YOUR soulmate TODAY!" due to all-caps).

We've arrived at these specific items based on direct feedback from people on our platform, and the exact guidelines may continue to evolve over time.

We are committed to making dating a viable long-term vertical on Facebook, and to do that we need to provide the best possible experience for the people on our platform. We truly appreciate all of the hard work up to this point to help raise the quality bar within the vertical, and look forward to continued progress.

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lol... they are going mental.

still can't get my own dating offer on fb.

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Good on them I say...

If they want to prioritise the experience of their user base, cracking down on the quality of dating ads is a sensible course of action.

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As someone with a white-listed account, I've gotta say it's been challenging to get profitable and stay within the guidelines. My primary reason for cloaking dating was always more about targeting than anything else and they really limit your targeting abilities if you want to stay within guidelines. Even with supposedly less competition, it's been challenging.

Any other white-listers want to compare notes, feel free to PM me and we can skype or chat on here.

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Cool, I'll send you a PM.

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You are right, that was the only reason I had to cloak dating. Target audience is in the thousands for some countries otherwise.

I talked to my rep last month about expanding the target demo. She conveyed my message higher up and then told me that they will consider doing that once the x-out rate for all dating ads comes drastically down. Most probably never lol

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Seems like they may be letting some advertisers play by different rules.

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Yeah I've been seeing the same thing with my White-listed account. Very expensive and ridiculously strict. For now I've moved on to other industries, had a good run running dating on FB for almost 5 years...

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Apart from lower CTRs, what effect are you seeing on CVRs?

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CVR's have dropped as well. In February 2014 I was seeing 3 to 4 times the CVRs I'm seeing now, using pretty much the exact same ads and targeting. How about you, seeing the same thing?

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I'm still trying to decide whether we should put some resources to this or not. From what you guys are saying, however, it seems like my initial assumptions about this opportunity were wrong.

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CVRs as well as ad CTRs have dropped because FB forces us to show our ads to a tiny demo that has already been saturated. Cloaked ads were able to target fresh profiles.
For example, I had a campaign running Aug 2013 to Feb 2014 which cost me $13 per lead. Now with all the guidelines on my whitelisted account, it is costing $35 per lead.

Cloaked accounts are going down too fast and there are no reliable bulk sellers so that option is no longer viable.
Well...It was fun while it lasted. I completely dominated Scandinavia for nearly a year. All those ads with a small red heart at the corner were mine

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Ouch.

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Like wannabe said, the biggest hurdle right now is the fact that you HAVE to select "Interested in Men/Women" when targeting the ads. This demo has been completely burned out. I do think that at some point they will broaden this (if enough brands keep complaining that is) so that you can select "undefined" as well. Once this happens, I will be a very happy whitelisted advertiser because it will open up the big pool of unsaturated profiles again.

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+1

That's my assumption too, I just don't feel like it's viable targeting "interested in" group. I do think they are letting some direct relationship advertisers out of this box though, based on what I've seen.

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Facebook is TOUGH to get a decent CPA even for our internal team. They basically want all professional ads with almost 0 direct response aspects to them.

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Ogilvy is spinning in his grave!

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My replay to facebook is two words. Fuck. You.

I will be living a few blocks away from their NYC office. Maybe I can go pay their "AWESOME" office a visit and ask for my accounts to be unbanned.

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