d3so's Facebook Gaming Follow Along Entry FBC1 (44)

Excited to get the ball rolling. Good luck to everyone!

Platform: Facebook Ads
Budget:$200
Niche: Gaming MMORPG
Network: EWA
Campaign: Shaiya (will split test with other offers)
Payout: $1.6
Tracking: CPVLab
Demographics: Male & Female / 13-17 (Core demographic according to Quantcast) & 18-25
Similar interests might include other MMORPGs & RPGs such as WOW, Everquest, Runescape, Final Fantasy, Pokemon, etc.

Shaiya is currently paused with EWA. I'm using a similar offer.

I'm going to upload a few ads and see what fb has to say.

08/06/11:
After I got home from work late last night, I thought I'd upload 2 ads to see what facebook would think. One targeted males and the other females both ages 13-17 located in the US. I also targeted those interested in Gaming for both Console & Social/PC.
The recommended bid was $2+ but I set mine at $0.50 for both ads.

When I woke up in the morning, I was surprised to find that my ads were approved!
Males got 3,000+ impressions with 3 clicks; CPC dropped to $0.44.
Females got 600+ impressions with 0 clicks. I'm not surprised since the ad appealed more to males even though according to quantcast, females are the core demographic for the offer.

What's amazing is that I had 4 clicks and 4 conversions according to my tracker. Did I get the ad review to convert? lol. I'm at $2+ profit right now.

I plan to test more ads and test the 18-25 demographic and possibly 25+ later on. Unfortunately, I have to work my day job today but I'll be grinding all night!
My question is how can I lower my spend? How can I increase impressions?
This is my very first success with fb.

Update: I actually got one conversion, my bad. I got the stats mixed with another campaign.

As long as your tracker agrees with what your network conversions are then your ads are super converters. From what I know, you also need to have a great CTR to go along with it to get cheaper clicks and for impressions. Either target more narrowly (more work with multiple campaigns) or make your ad more broad to fit your target (prob sacrifice CR).

typically with FB your CPC's will decrease with history and in consistent high CTR. promoting a non gaming offer right now I've maintaned my initial bid but as i get more clicks and my CTR maintains i'm continuing to see the suggested and avg. drop. At time i usually try to "force it" down by bidding what the avg. CPC is or slightly above. If you do this and your CTR stays up you should start to see further drops. Pausing or lowering the budget for a day and then starting a new day can be helpful to push the costs down as well.

Just don't get to crazy and lower the bid to quickly i've found this hurts my ads CTR (probably lower position, etc.) and if that CTR drops getting the avg. CPC to lower will be tough... hope that helps.

08/07/11:
1:00AM (PST):
These are the two ads I uploaded:

I got the image off FB Spy.
I didn't make anymore conversions other than the ones from the morning; it seems my success was short-lived.

I'm going to test the same ads with the older demographic and create a new ad for the younger.

Stats for 08/06/11:

Leads: 1 (from male 13-17)
ROI: -88%

try to keyword target your campaign, looks broad to me.. the demo not all like the game

Are you promoting Wizard101 or Shaiya? Everywhere I've looked doesn't allow Wizard101 to be promoted on social... just a heads up in case.

Originally Posted by lavish

Are you promoting Wizard101 or Shaiya? Everywhere I've looked doesn't allow Wizard101 to be promoted on social... just a heads up in case.

try to refine your demo, and down your bids once CTR is 0.3% or 0.2%, I'm profitable at $0.20 cpc, if you can lower CPC, it is much better, more margin.

If my CPC reaches below $0.30 should I lower my max bid from $0.50?

and does fb have a habit of viewing your ads and leaving them pending for an extended time?

08/07/11 Stats:

Leads: 21

Cumulative:
Total Leads: 24
Total Spend: $72.23/$200.00
ROI: -60%

It looks like I'm going to have to stick with the wiz offer and this angle. Otherwise, I'll blow the rest of my budget if I continue to test.
What input can you guys offer?

If the Selena angle is legit then I would hit it very hard.

I know you can get very high CTR's with pics of her. You can be sneaky and put some Bieber love in there as well.

"Selena a Wizard?
She cast a spell on Bieber. No its your turn! Become a wizard today..."

Make sure its allowed though because they will fry your ass if not.

I see you aim at younger crowd, reduce your bid, cap it at $0.30 for the one which bring you 17 conversion, i like your ad, sure winner

Originally Posted by deondup

If the Selena angle is legit then I would hit it very hard.

I know you can get very high CTR's with pics of her. You can be sneaky and put some Bieber love in there as well.

"Selena a Wizard?
She cast a spell on Bieber. No its your turn! Become a wizard today..."

Make sure its allowed though because they will fry your ass if not.

Originally Posted by hd2010

I see you aim at younger crowd, reduce your bid, cap it at $0.30 for the one which bring you 17 conversion, i like your ad, sure winner

I don't know how Wizard101 is monetized but you're going to run into quality issues with the advertiser if you're sending under 18 traffic to it and it's a CPL offer. The celeb angle is probably going to lower quality further since it's not related to the game at all and a lot of leadgen games are strict about using trademarks and celeb references. If you haven't already, hit up your AM and see if it's alright or you'll end up spending money testing the campaign then getting blocked from the offer.

Your first angle has the best chance of working, since it fits the game better. What you need to do is improve the CTR. Try some in-game pics, and change your titles so they describe the game better and hype it up instead of just saying that people can play it for free. None of your audience knows Wizard101 right now, so using the game's title isn't going to help your CTR. I run gaming a lot and across all my campaigns I've seen pictures having the biggest impact on conversions (in-game almost always converts better than promo-style images), and titles having the biggest impact on CTR. You need ads that a) grab the viewer's attention and suck them in, and b) let them know EXACTLY what they'll see when they hit the offer page.

Why are you exact age matching for 13-17 yr olds? You pay a premium for this kind of targeting and your demo size decreases significantly, there is no point in using exact age match if you are targeting 13-17 yr olds since your lead quality will be shit anyways.

Do everything torgo mentioned above, start by trying to get your CTR up.

This is hilarious, I was just looking at the Selena images yesterday and was going to suggest it for those of you pushing Wiz

Originally Posted by torgo

I don't know how Wizard101 is monetized but you're going to run into quality issues with the advertiser if you're sending under 18 traffic to it and it's a CPL offer. The celeb angle is probably going to lower quality further since it's not related to the game at all and a lot of leadgen games are strict about using trademarks and celeb references. If you haven't already, hit up your AM and see if it's alright or you'll end up spending money testing the campaign then getting blocked from the offer.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/111/1119002p1.html

Originally Posted by torgo

Your first angle has the best chance of working, since it fits the game better. What you need to do is improve the CTR. Try some in-game pics, and change your titles so they describe the game better and hype it up instead of just saying that people can play it for free. None of your audience knows Wizard101 right now, so using the game's title isn't going to help your CTR. I run gaming a lot and across all my campaigns I've seen pictures having the biggest impact on conversions (in-game almost always converts better than promo-style images), and titles having the biggest impact on CTR. You need ads that a) grab the viewer's attention and suck them in, and b) let them know EXACTLY what they'll see when they hit the offer page.

just curious but where does these games usually converts? Are they usually register and then confirm email address for it to convert? (a double opt in)

Originally Posted by 403flux

Why are you exact age matching for 13-17 yr olds? You pay a premium for this kind of targeting and your demo size decreases significantly, there is no point in using exact age match if you are targeting 13-17 yr olds since your lead quality will be shit anyways.

Do everything torgo mentioned above, start by trying to get your CTR up.

Originally Posted by vuedoolor

just curious but where does these games usually converts? Are they usually register and then confirm email address for it to convert? (a double opt in)

I paused a bunch of ads because I want to focus more on optimization.


I noticed a rapid spike of impressions and clicks and a decline.
I'm puzzled as to why this happened.
What can I do to increase my impressions?

I've been noticing that FB is getting less linear in their impression serve. On most camps. i see blasts of traffic and impressions followed by pausing for certain periods of time. Then the switch comes back on and the cycle repeats.

Almost always if i see impressions stop or spike off increasing my budget by a fair amount will bring them back. (seems like they don't like to spend more than 25% - 50% of your budget in a short period of time, but it's very inconsistent.)

Just backing you up on the age demo of the wizard offer.. if you go to google.com/adplanner you will see that like 44% of wizard101.com site traffic is under 17 years old.. thats almost half. That would be a good indication that they accept young demos otherwise their business model would already be going bankrupt

Impression wise the only things I think you can do are:
1) Raise bids on the ads (note that if you have a decent CTR this doesn't necessarily mean your CPC will go up, much)
2) Increase campaign budget = Facebook likes you more because you're willing to spend more
3) Raise ad CTR, although you can't exactly choose to do this

What kind of spend did the spike entail? If between 9-10 am you spend $15 on clicks and the daily budget is $25 then Facebook will nerf your impressions to even out your days spend.

I started my daily spend @ $20 but when I saw activity yesterday I increased it to $50.
Then today, I decreased it to $35 because I didn't want to quickly exhaust my budget.
I haven't received any impressions or clicks since 12pm (pst).

Did decreasing my budget stop the impressions?
I'm getting about $0.30 CPC with a max bid of $0.50. Will it help if I increase my max bid?

increasing the max bid could help but i think you'll get better results from a budget increase and you won't chance a lower CTR raising your avg. CPC. during this case study i've only had 1 round that managed to spend the entire budget in a quick manner but it was only set to $15.00

Thanks for the input guys!
I really appreciate it.


It seems it was connected to the budget.
I increased my daily budget back to $50 and I get a huge spike with conversions.

Now, I just need to set it at a reasonable daily limit to stay within the $200 budget.

Complete stats from 08/08/11:

Conversions: 17

Cumulative:
Total Leads: 39
Total Spend: $110.00/$200.00
ROI: -57%

What's your EPC on the second ad in the screenshot? I ran some campaigns on teen traffic last month and with that CTR, the CPC was about $0.08.

Try sending some more traffic to that ad and watch the CPC drop like a rock. If your EPC is good enough it should profit become a profitable campaign once the CPC is worked down.

Did you start to profit towards the end? It looks like you were closing the negative ROI gap.

@dsso, your campaign will be profitable, if you up your daily budget...lower down your CPC, once your CTR established.

Originally Posted by Mr Green

Did you start to profit towards the end? It looks like you were closing the negative ROI gap.

Originally Posted by hd2010

@dsso, your campaign will be profitable, if you up your daily budget...lower down your CPC, once your CTR established.

Complete stats from 08/09/11:

Conversions: 12

Cumulative:
Total Leads: 51
Total Spend: $130.00/$200.00
ROI: -51%
I set my daily spend back to $20 and I paused the ad targeting males 18-25.

I messed up that stats from 08/08/11 will update them.

How should I go about in terms of improving my campaign? I'm thinking about duplicating my active ads and adding justin bieber as a target which will increase my reach.

Complete stats from 08/10/11:

Conversions: 9

Complete stats from 08/11/11:

Conversions: 14

Cumulative:
Total Leads: 74
Total Spend: $175.93/$200.00
ROI: -47%

I just let my ads run the past two days. My ROI is somewhat improving.
I paused today to analyze my current stats as I only have about $24 left.

I see the CPC of your first ad went down from 0.24 to 0.15 which is quite good. Your total ROI is -47% but what was the ROI of the last day? You might be seeing a profit if you can keep up that CTR.

I was asking about the same approach regarding Selena and my AM said that she is no longer endorsing the game and sent an email saying to remove all Selena picks from ads. Ask your AM to be sure. On another note you can get decent conversions and CTR targeting "Raven Wood"

If you use your bid to cap the CPC, you should get a cheaper cpc which allow you go into the profitable zone...just watch out for impression, make sure it don't nose dive.

Don't cap it yet man. Give that top ad another ~100 clicks and you'll be looking at a $0.10c CPC. Then once it's down that low, cap it a little above what you're spending now and it'll drop further.

This is assuming your EPC is high enough for the campaign to profit once your CPC is lowered.

Originally Posted by sp33dr4ge

I was asking about the same approach regarding Selena and my AM said that she is no longer endorsing the game and sent an email saying to remove all Selena picks from ads. Ask your AM to be sure. On another note you can get decent conversions and CTR targeting "Raven Wood"

Originally Posted by hd2010

If you use your bid to cap the CPC, you should get a cheaper cpc which allow you go into the profitable zone...just watch out for impression, make sure it don't nose dive.

Originally Posted by torgo

Don't cap it yet man. Give that top ad another ~100 clicks and you'll be looking at a $0.10c CPC. Then once it's down that low, cap it a little above what you're spending now and it'll drop further.

This is assuming your EPC is high enough for the campaign to profit once your CPC is lowered.

Stats from 08/18/11:

I ran my 2 female 13-17 ads and added justin bieber as a target.
I also noticed that my CPC was reset since I paused my ads for a couple of days.
Only 7 conversions :P

Overall Cumulative:
Total Leads: 83
Total Revenue: $103.75
Total Spend: $200.00/$200.00
ROI: -48%


I focused my time on both my female ads 13-17 when I clearly should've spent time trying to optimize my male ads since one of them had a good CR. I duplicated (sg2.1) the high CR ad but it didn't take off.
There were click discrepancies; my tracker reported 962 clicks and fb reports 813. Did I get more clicks than intended or did those clicks come from bots/reviewers?

Final Thoughts:
I learned a ton from this campaign. Split testing images, targeting different age groups, and targeting by interests. Most importantly, I learned that the dream of advertising on fb isn't dead, it just takes work.
This was my first somewhat successful campaign with fb; 95% of my ads were approved the first time around, I received a substantial amount of traffic/impressions, clicks, and generated revenue. I even got to see my CPC drop!

The budget of $200.00 was limiting (I did feel as if I was spending more on fb than I ever did with ppv). You couldn't test much and I don't think you can drop your CPC down with a small daily budget (right?). I did notice another member ran his campaign with no regard for budget. He exhausted the $200 in about two days, but he actually made a good profit.

I am still confused as to the science of bidding and lowering CPC down to pennies.
I know it centers on daily budget, starting bids, CTRs of .4+, and lowering bids.
Perhaps, someone can write an elaborate guide for us?

I also wished that we were given a definite format on how to report and document our stats and actions to avoid chaos and confusion. I tried my best to format my stats and I'm sure I've left out substantial information that you guys could've provided input on.

I had fun and am looking forward to more contests!

Just noticed that this thread was mainly about Wizard101. I have a ton of experience running Wizard101 on display and on Facebook over the summer. First of all, I was targeting only 18-25 year olds. If you plan to do volume, and I mean several thousand leads a day, you won't get away with targeting under 18. They simple won't make money of it.

My average EPC with Facebook was 12c. My average CPC on the overhand was 6c (sometimes it dipped to 3c). So I was pulling a 100% ROI on average. Australia and New Zealand were pulling in much higher EPCs, but the CPCs were higher as well. I don't remember my stats that well for those two countries, since the demos weren't as big as the US. Forgot to mention that I used no keyword targeting.

Images that I used:











All in-games, so the advertiser stays happy.

Headlines that worked well:
Level 1 is TOO Hard!
23 sec to beat level 3
Level 3 is STUPID!

I've pushed wizard101 too, and i have been testing those in game images, but those always resulted in the shittiest CTR ads. What kind of CTR were you seeing when you were targeting broad mgrunin?

Originally Posted by mgrunin

Just noticed that this thread was mainly about Wizard101. I have a ton of experience running Wizard101 on display and on Facebook over the summer. First of all, I was targeting only 18-25 year olds. If you plan to do volume, and I mean several thousand leads a day, you won't get away with targeting under 18. They simple won't make money of it.

My average EPC with Facebook was 12c. My average CPC on the overhand was 6c (sometimes it dipped to 3c). So I was pulling a 100% ROI on average. Australia and New Zealand were pulling in much higher EPCs, but the CPCs were higher as well. I don't remember my stats that well for those two countries, since the demos weren't as big as the US. Forgot to mention that I used no keyword targeting.

Images that I used:











All in-games, so the advertiser stays happy.

Headlines that worked well:
Level 1 is TOO Hard!
23 sec to beat level 3
Level 3 is STUPID!