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I just got F'ed in the A by facebook. Can anyone help me figure out why? (10)

01-08-2012 05:43 AM #1 doryphoros (Member)
I just got F'ed in the A by facebook. Can anyone help me figure out why?

Doing my first ppc campaign. Have a bunch of ads selling a cb product, been testing/optimizing. Breaking even.

One of my new ads had gotten about 350 impressions/0 clicks for two days.
I started running the ad around 7.30pm (it was on pause the whole day)

I unpause it, and by 10pm, 102k impressions, 116 clicks, at $0.70/click.

All my other ads with similar ctr (~.11, same demo) are around $0.20

I find it really hard to believe that over 100 people clicked this ad in an two hours, and why this ad's cpc is more than triple my similar ads' cpc. It literally ate up my daily spend and then some.

0 conversions btw. Just when I thought I was going to start moving into profit territory.

01-08-2012 08:57 AM #2 tical (Member)

Be careful when unpausing an account towards the end of the day because fb will slam you with traffic in order to meet your daily spend limit. This has happened to me a couple of times already. The first time I had a daily spend limit of 500 and I unpaused an ad at 10pm with my CPC set to 1.00 (just so that I could get some initial data). I came back around a little after 11pm and found out that I spent about $400 in just over an hour on overpriced clicks. After I lost another $150 because of the same thing, it finally "clicked" to not do that anymore

Your CPC costs were probably higher because you were getting premium inventory (i.e., top spots) and paying extra it.

01-08-2012 12:05 PM #3 midget (Member)

lol 106 clicks in 2 hours? trust me facebook can do a lot mopre than that

01-08-2012 12:11 PM #4 doryphoros (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by tical View Post
Be careful when unpausing an account towards the end of the day because fb will slam you with traffic in order to meet your daily spend limit. This has happened to me a couple of times already. The first time I had a daily spend limit of 500 and I unpaused an ad at 10pm with my CPC set to 1.00 (just so that I could get some initial data). I came back around a little after 11pm and found out that I spent about $400 in just over an hour on overpriced clicks. After I lost another $150 because of the same thing, it finally "clicked" to not do that anymore

Your CPC costs were probably higher because you were getting premium inventory (i.e., top spots) and paying extra it.
Wow yeah that's exactly what I did. I had it paused until about 9pm. Lesson learned.

01-08-2012 11:52 PM #5 zeno (Administrator)

Yeh watch your timing - Facebook advertising is based on Pacific Time, so don't be unpausing just before the day is going to end and reset the daily budgets.

01-08-2012 11:56 PM #6 rich (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by zeno View Post
Yeh watch your timing - Facebook advertising is based on Pacific Time, so don't be unpausing just before the day is going to end and reset the daily budgets.
The timezone can be set when you created your account - ie my daily spends reset at 12am UK time as normal

01-09-2012 12:36 AM #7 asianpersuasian (Member)

Whenever you unpause you will always get more expensive clicks at first. As you let the ad stay active the clicks will go back down to normal.

01-09-2012 02:46 AM #8 zeno (Administrator)

Quote Originally Posted by rich View Post
The timezone can be set when you created your account - ie my daily spends reset at 12am UK time as normal
Woops, I had a feeling that might be the case, mine is on PST as for some dumb reason when I made my account (i'm an NZer) I selected PST. When I started adverts I remember thinking it might be PST due to the HQ being in Palo Alto, then I found out my account was set to PST and lol'd. Pity you can't change your zone once you've made your account, I would've changed over to NZ time then changed to EST when I started advertising :P

01-09-2012 10:59 AM #9 Finch (Moderator)

Yeah, be careful when you're unpausing. Also be careful not to underestimate the traffic in a demographic.

I set up a campaign in Sweden a few weeks ago with my daily budget set to $500. I found it difficult to get clicks on my chosen demo before so I wasn't expecting too much traffic.

When I checked the campaign the next day, not only had it burnt through the $500, but it had also taken about $200 from the next day's budget too. Thankfully I was just about skimming profit from the ads, but it could have been ugly.

Even if you've only ever dealt in trickles of Facebook traffic, be prepared for a tsunami!

01-10-2012 05:00 AM #10 mediumpie (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by doryphoros View Post

I unpause it, and by 10pm, 102k impressions, 116 clicks, at $0.70/click.

All my other ads with similar ctr (~.11, same demo) are around $0.20
'

Be careful pausing ads that have a good CTR. If you pause the ad FB will bump your CPCs up once you unpause for being inconsistent about running that ad. Think about it. They want ads running 24/7 so they are willing to give you cheap clicks but once you "stab" them in the back (pausing) they are going to do it back to you Try to put the budget on $1.00 when you don't want to spend. It's worth saving the CTR and CPC.

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