Facebook Ad Performance: What's Your Opinion?

[Blaise84]

Recently, I ran a Facebook ad just to try it out. Since this is my first time running a Facebook ad, I'm curious if my experience is "typical."

I did this as a test. I don't have a product I'm selling with this ad. I simply wrote a blog post and advertised the post, and the ad sends people to my Facebook page and blog's website. The ad is a 3-day ad, running Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.

Here are the numbers:

• Before running the ad, Facebook said my potential reach was about 8,000,000 (this assumes an unlimited budget)
• With the budget I set, $40.00, Facebook said my reach potential would be about 15,000. That seems to be accurate, as I'm at a 10k reached with about 15 hours left in the ad's life
• My Facebook group linked to the ad has received 8 new likes in two days, while the post itself has received 10 likes and 2 comments, all driven from the ad
• My blog's website received 350 visitors on Wednesday, 550 on Thursday, and so far today, 70. 95% of the visits driven from the ad

I consider post likes, Facebook group likes, and comments to be "gumballs." I suppose a page visit is a gumball too. But, compared to the number of people reached, and the number of visitors I had to my website, it seems that my responses are low. For example, 550 people visited my website yesterday, but nobody liked the post or commented on the post from the actual website. The ad had reached 10k people on Facebook, and only 20 people have taken some sort of action in the form of a like or comment.

Are these numbers typical? Again, I just did this as an experiment to see what running a Facebook ad is like. I imagine it would be different if I were advertising a product to sell as opposed to a simple area of interest, which is what my blog post was.

 

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[theag]

The ad had reached 10k people on Facebook, and only 20 people have taken some sort of action in the form of a like or comment

Thats very bad. Your post is too general to comment on properly, but probably your targeting is bad (too broad) and/or your creative is bad and/or your content is bad. Its also not clear what your goal, ad format, objective etc was. You can't set up a test just for giggles. Have a goal and use the corresponding ad objective.

You are also confusing a lot of things, for example:

advertised the post, and the ad sends people to my Facebook page and blog's website

I dont know of an ad format that sends people to two different locations. Guess you could put different links in the description. But either way its a bad idea to do this because you need to have one clear goal for every single ad.

550 people visited my website yesterday, but nobody liked the post or commented on the post from the actual website

Thats not surprising because your website probably isnt facebook.com. People cant like or comment on an facebook ad from your website. They dont even see it.

You need to do some research on the basics first. A lot of info out there.

 

[MitchC]

It's hard to say when you have no goal with the ad, if you had some method of monetising it then if it was profitable you'd call it successful and how profitable in terms of ROI would be how successful, if it was not profitable then a failure.

What ad objective did you set? If you set PPE Facebook will show your ad to people who engage a lot, if you set clicks it will show it to people who click a lot, if you set it to purchase it will show it to people who purchase. The difference in results is huge, an ad running PPE objective can get 100s of likes and comments and no sales, and the same ad running purchase objective can get 100s of purchases with no likes and comments, same for clicks, you'll get clicks but no purchases or engagement. If you target add to cart you'll get a lot of abandoned carts.

One easy way to give you an answer without you having any goal to measure your ad against would simply be to look at the relevance score, its a number out of 10, the closer to 10 the better your ad basically. But again, it's a relevance score, so if you get your targeting wrong or too broad, you may have a good ad creative and copy but simply the targeting was wrong so it was not relevant to your audience.

Also quick tip, go to your ad, view the post, click on the likes to see who liked it and then you can invite them to like your page.

A couple of other tips would be to install Hotjar on your site to see how interested the people who click actually were.

Another would be to install the Facebook Pixel on your site and build a look a like audience of the people who visited. You could also retarget those who visit with more posts or an offer.

Edit: I just realised you might have had audience network placements turned on so Facebook will put your ad as an ad that pops up in a mobile game app or something so yeah it won’t get any likes from that and heaps of accidental clicks.

 

[BD64]

Did you use a custom audience? Input any prior data? You want to give FB more specifics on who you are tagreting. Since this is the start of your running ads you likely don't have targeting down, still make a custom audience and keep it somewhat broad. As you continue running ads overtime FB will be able to optimize itself better and you will also have a better idea of who to be hitting (hopefully).
One thing you may want to eventually play around with is a lookalike audience. This requires prior engagement and action taken by atleast 100 people, although of course, the more the better generally.

Also like @theag mentioned it seems like your actual ad had some issues. You mention looking at both website traffic and to your FB page... You want each ad to have 1 main objective. So either your ad would drive traffic to to your website or to your website, not both.

Really when it comes down to it FB ads require time and money on testing and learning before you can get them right. Kudos to you though for getting started.

 

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[Blaise84]

It's hard to say when you have no goal with the ad, if you had some method of monetising it then if it was profitable you'd call it successful and how profitable in terms of ROI would be how successful, if it was not profitable then a failure.

What ad objective did you set? If you set PPE Facebook will show your ad to people who engage a lot, if you set clicks it will show it to people who click a lot, if you set it to purchase it will show it to people who purchase. The difference in results is huge, an ad running PPE objective can get 100s of likes and comments and no sales, and the same ad running purchase objective can get 100s of purchases with no likes and comments, same for clicks, you'll get clicks but no purchases or engagement. If you target add to cart you'll get a lot of abandoned carts.

One easy way to give you an answer without you having any goal to measure your ad against would simply be to look at the relevance score, its a number out of 10, the closer to 10 the better your ad basically. But again, it's a relevance score, so if you get your targeting wrong or too broad, you may have a good ad creative and copy but simply the targeting was wrong so it was not relevant to your audience.

Also quick tip, go to your ad, view the post, click on the likes to see who liked it and then you can invite them to like your page.

A couple of other tips would be to install Hotjar on your site to see how interested the people who click actually were.

Another would be to install the Facebook Pixel on your site and build a look a like audience of the people who visited. You could also retarget those who visit with more posts or an offer.

Edit: I just realised you might have had audience network placements turned on so Facebook will put your ad as an ad that pops up in a mobile game app or something so yeah it won’t get any likes from that and heaps of accidental clicks.

Thank you. I appreciate your thoughts. Clearly, you're more experienced than I am with Facebook ads. These ideas will definitely help. Basically, I just ran an ad to gain the experience. I sent people to my website, but it looks like the 10 people who liked my page as a result of the ad searched it out and found it.

 

[Blaise84]

Did you use a custom audience? Input any prior data? You want to give FB more specifics on who you are tagreting. Since this is the start of your running ads you likely don't have targeting down, still make a custom audience and keep it somewhat broad. As you continue running ads overtime FB will be able to optimize itself better and you will also have a better idea of who to be hitting (hopefully).
One thing you may want to eventually play around with is a lookalike audience. This requires prior engagement and action taken by atleast 100 people, although of course, the more the better generally.

Also like @theag mentioned it seems like your actual ad had some issues. You mention looking at both website traffic and to your FB page... You want each ad to have 1 main objective. So either your ad would drive traffic to to your website or to your website, not both.

Really when it comes down to it FB ads require time and money on testing and learning before you can get them right. Kudos to you though for getting started.

Thank you for your thoughts. They're appreciated. I did target an audience. It may have been too broad. I targeted people with interests who I thought would find the ad content relevant.
I was mistaken in my original post-- the ad sent people to my website, not my Facebook page. The 10 people who liked my Facebook page as a result of the ad searched it out on their own after seeing the ad.
My end numbers were 8,453 people reached and 896 link clicks. So, of the people reached by the ad, 10.5% clicked.
I take it you've got some experience with Facebook ads?

 

[Blaise84]

Thats very bad. Your post is too general to comment on properly, but probably your targeting is bad (too broad) and/or your creative is bad and/or your content is bad. Its also not clear what your goal, ad format, objective etc was. You can't set up a test just for giggles. Have a goal and use the corresponding ad objective.

You are also confusing a lot of things, for example:


I dont know of an ad format that sends people to two different locations. Guess you could put different links in the description. But either way its a bad idea to do this because you need to have one clear goal for every single ad.


Thats not surprising because your website probably isnt facebook.com. People cant like or comment on an facebook ad from your website. They dont even see it.

You need to do some research on the basics first. A lot of info out there.

Edit:
The ad sent people to my website, not both the Facebook page and website. Given my inexperience with FB ads, I was thinking it sent people to both because people were liking my FB page. Turns out they searched the page out themselves and liked it as a result of the ad.

Thanks for your thoughts bud. Will apply them.

 

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[Xavier X]

I haven't used Facebook ads since 2013, so my experience with it is mostly dated.
However, the numbers you've gotten are pretty low in my opinion.

I ran two similar campaigns back then, and they performed very differently. So, content type is perhaps more important for engagement than budget.

Both were geared toward increasing Facebook Page likes, fans or whatever they were called back then.

Campaign 1 was for a music website: Spent $5/day for 100 days (about $500 total).
The audience was very targeted. It ended with a little over 5k likes/fans on the Facebook Page, and mediocre engagement with the content.

Campaign 2 was for a comedy/humor website: Spent $5/day for 30 days (about $150 total).
Very targeted audience. It ended with a little over 16k likes/fans on the Facebook Page.
Engagement with the content was very high.
About 4-5k of the 16k resulted organically from post engagement (shares etc).

It was at about this same time Facebook changed the way you reach people who like your page.
This seriously put me off, and has left a sour taste till this day, as I felt scammed.

Essentially, they sold me on
"hey, advertise your FB page, so you can engage your fans and drive traffic to your website."

Then once I paid to build the base, they go
"hey, remember those fans? Yeah, you gotta pay each time you want to reach them."

They changed their algorithm so posts only reach about 1% of people who like your page.
As a result, engagement plummeted dramatically, except you paid to "boost" the post.

I still have both pages, but don't use them actively anymore. I closed the music website, but the comedy one is still kicking.