When to CPM on FB? (10)
So I know everyone is trying to get the CPCs down to the last penny, but when is it time we switch over to the CPM part of fb?
Is there a certain amount of Impressions and CTR we need to hit in order to be confident to move it over?
Do I just take a great converting advert and just go CPM with it? I have never done CPM on FB so I figured I'd ask.
Never. It used to be that you could switch your high ctr ads over to CPM, get the same quality of impressions, and cheaper clicks.
Unfortunately, that's not the case anymore. The CPM ads get lower priority impressions which equal less clicks. You probably should do a test to see for yourself, but expect your CTR to drop like a rock when you switch from CPC to CPM bidding.
Read this: http://www.adhustler.com/a-readers-f...tion-answered/
^^ I agree, I did a test today on a ad thats been solid for like a week or 2 at 0.20%+ on intl traffic getting a steady $0.03cpc... I did the exact same ad on cpm and ctr was 0.09% with $0.05cpc
Interesting. Any chance you could get more volume by bidding CPM?
I find testing on Facebook incredibly annoying and inconsistent. I have considered testing with cpm and moving the best ads over to cpc. Anyone else doing this by chance?
I would do it the other way round, if your ads suck you will still be paying per 1000 impressions. At least with cpc you will only be paying for clicks (potential leads).
@oneano - Me! 
I'm more comfortable starting with CPM, and then switching to CPC. My best CPM ads have done better when moved over to CPC.
i think starting with cpm is really bad! you trow good cpc ads away that way
^^ Yes, that's a good point. But when starting with cpm, I bid around 0.10 and let it run till each of my ads gets to about 3k impressions. Say I have 20 ads and I get charged all of what I bid, it would cost me $6 to test them. Since I use keyword targeting, there is a good chance that I will find ads with decent ctr (say 0.09 or 0.11). Then when I port them over to cpc, the ctr is almost always better - leading to cheap clicks.
The only problem I've had with starting with cpc is, when you have 20 ads and are bidding something like 0.40-0.50 per click to get impressions, one or two ads get a higher preference because of good initial ctr and it's a little bit expensive sometimes.
I'll give you an example: I ran a gaming offer with a cpc bid of 0.50 and had some 20 ads. A couple of them had a ctr of around 0.09...so they continued to get impressions. The demo was pretty big even with keyword targeting, so I got impressions real fast and burned through my budget. But for the 0.09 ctr, I was paying 0.27 per click and it was too high to make it profitable. And the cpc didn't come down since the ctr wasn't that great.
Also with cpm I can set a $20/day budget and expect fb to give me equal number of imps for all my ads - giving every ad a decent chance. But with cpc, that $20/day budget could go to just 2-3 ads, and the rest of the ads end up with 300-500 imps each.
But I love cpc. I use cpm just to get started. Its a really good point that you make - we could be throwing away good ads that way. Maybe I should test more campaigns starting with cpc before jumping into conclusions.
Why not just test both CPM and CPC. I can tell you my BIGGEST campaign on FB was all CPM.
As lifetweak mentioned when you go CPC you always have to worry about getting ads going. Sometimes you might have a winner on your hands but just because it didn't get good CTR right off the bad FB decides not to give it a fighting chance. With CPM at least you can get a fair split test in terms of impressions. Also, remember with FB ad decay is a huge factor in performance.
Another thing I noticed when I went CPM is that my performance from day to day was fairly steady compared to CPC. I still noticed my ads would die out after a few weeks, but at least the CTRs and CR rates were very consistent day to day.
I think it has to do with your demo and what other advertisers are doing. If a lot of people are running CPC maybe CPM is just what you needed and vise versa.
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