Facebook Ads

Yesterday, I was reading A VC, where Fred Wilson couldn't figure out how to create an ad. (Today, he posts about his success in doing so.)

After reading his post yesterday, I figured out how to create an ad in Facebook. First, you have to create a company profile. Here's me setting up a 'Stowe Boyd and The /Messengers' page.

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Then a new item shows in the applications list at the upper left: the page manager. When you click it, it opens this page:

At the bottom, I am invited to create an ad campaign to boot traffic, and a button at the upper right starts the ad creation process. I select it, and I can drive ads to the new page I have created for my company in Facebook. I could also direct the traffic elsewhere: to my blog for example.

The selection of interests and demographics seems pretty minimal:

Shouldn't this be a lot more fine-grained? If you have millions of people in the group, shouldn't I be able to winnow it down based on something a bit more particular than 'Technology' and 'Web design'? I really want to reach entrepreneurs building web apps: no one else really matters to me. So, I would have expected a lot more flexibility in this area. As it is, it seems geared to consumer products, or very large demographics based on age and geography -- 24 to 35 year-old women in San Francisco, for example -- rather than targeting profiles based on profiles.

Of course, reading profiles and traffic in the Facebook streams is an iffy proposition on a privacy basis, anyway. However, the basic demographics are potentially just as irksome if you feel that your age, geography, and sex are something you are opting to share with friends, not with advertisers.

I ran into some snags with my ad, since the ads cannot contain '=' or '/' -- so I had to edit the copy (although it looked fine in the preview!):

The next step is to figure out a budget, based either on an amount to pay for clicks or for views:

I opted not to buy my ad, when confronted with the inevitable credit card form:

Since I can't really target entrepreneurs who might be interested in my help, I would be tossing money into a goof, not really chasing real leads.

Conclusions

It was easy to do, and for some products and services -- dare I say 'mass market'? -- it could be workable.

But I wonder about the broad spectrum ads that has something like this pushed to me, and my network:

What kind of targetting is that? Here I am, a guy that dresses like an unmade bed and who thinks that suits are a symbol of a class-obsessed society, getting ads to H&M high fashion galas. Really bad matches.

Why can't I tag myself with truly meaningful identifiers, so that appropriate information can find me? It's only then that ads become information. This is just social spam: another form of junk mail.

Comments

[Mike Grishaver]

Why can't I tag myself with truly meaningful identifiers, so that appropriate information can find me? It's only then that ads become information.

Great point. Ad targeting could be much more granular. Major demographic pivots are for the soap companies. I'm a big fan of soap, mind you. But in the age of mobile/social communities, there should be waaay more targeted options.

[Bob Warfield]

I believe their view of "fine grain" is that you use keywords to get there. The trouble is, if you experiment with the keywords, almost any one I tried radically limits the audience. I even went with some pretty mainstream stuff (nothing technical!) like "Music", "Beer", and "Cars".

The conclusion you have to reach is one of the following:

1. It isn't working right yet. There have to be more than 15,000 odd people interested in Music.

2. Things are working, but the profile doesn't shed as much light as people had assumed it would.

3. Things are working, and the profile tells all that users want it to tell, but this site is all about college kids flirting and isn't that great an ad platform.

Other conclusions are possible, but it sure is interesting what numbers come back from keywords.

More on my blog:

http://smoothspan.wordpress.com/2007/11/12/facebooks-audience-and-advertising-very-few-to-target/

[Fabio]

Nice post Steve.
I particularly agree with the last lines "Why can't I tag myself with truly meaningful identifiers, so that appropriate information can find me? It's only then that ads become information. This is just social spam: another form of junk mail."

Something very similar is the basis of my startup (http://www.veedow.com) and the core idea is that adverts could be a valuable source of information when delivered to the right person (with her permission), at the right time and most of all when it's about something that person cares about.