! Facebook Ads - Beware !

Hi,

I've bought a $350 coupon for Facebook ads and my journey on the worst ad platform ever started. I just wanted to share my experience so that someone can stay back. I'd really want to hear these before signing up for an advertiser account.

- First of all, their approval system really sucks. It's both horrible and funny at the same time. They have a blurry list of rules which can be understood anyway you like.

- Their approval process is out-of-standard. Exactly the same ad gets approved today in one account, but it gets disapproved tomorrow in another account. It depends on the staff examining the ad.

- This giant company's approval team does not have proxy servers or other tools to view landing pages that are targeted for countries other than US. That is, if you are promoting an offer whose landing page is restricted to UK or CA residents, your ad will be disapproved since the brilliant approval team member can't view the landing page in US borders.

- The approval team does not have enough background for the position. Even if you tell them "there are IP restrictions...", "that redirection is necessary for tracking", "the landing page has all the information..." etc the only answer you get is "when I click your ad, a white screen appears, I can't see anything".

- And there's no way of promoting a free-stuff site since the ad text should
include every step of the actions needed for every offer on your site. You can't just create an ad telling "you can come and win free stuff by participating in offers". When the approval buddy hears about "offer" word he/she transforms into the "do not approve" mode and definitely finds a reason to reject your ad - the reason you'll never know.

- They have the worst interface ever. I don't personally use Facebook, but I think this is almost the same interface where you send messages to pretty girls. Altough the pages are neat; deleting, editing, approval, bidding - actually every operation is at the hardest way.

So, if you're thinking about starting facebook ads, think again. You may regret it.

I hope this helps someone,

Best regards,

 

ive heard the same problem from a friend here....

 

Not valid reasons to beware. But I do a agree about the Interface.

I just started using them with 250 in coupons. All my ads were approved quickly. And the facebook traffic I'm getting converts very well for my blog network. About 5 times better than the Adwords campaign I've been running. Maybe I'm an adwords noob.

 

I didn't say no one will ever get approved. I'm just telling that, I have a friend just like you (all ads approved) and when I add his ads to my account, they get disapproved.

There's huge risk you have to take. I have about $200 to spent until 30th of january, but I have no ads to spent that.

 

there are many companies offering services and optimizing you e-budget. I’m checking itsclickzilla. Maybe they fit also your needs

 

are they managing my ads budget? or are they a ppc company?

 

Facebook is great.

The approval process weeds out the people who don't try, yes I had to make 6 ad's before 2 were approved, cut's down on competition I like it.

I have not done CA or UK or AUS there yet dunno but I am sure I can work within the system.
I promote free stuff all day long it's nice.

And why would you buy a coupon for $350 dollars of advertising? When I started i found enough coupons for free to get near $250 or $300 dollars worth.

I guess 1 less advertiser to compete with on facebook, see why I love the system?

 

I had over 250$ free. 50 dollar off facebook for somthing i cant remember and rest of this visa thing. Great for me personally although i doubt id pay much or use it all time.

 

It's frustrating as hell to get an ad approved and they won't let you talk to a live person about getting a detailed reason. One time after a handful of ads got turned down, I asked them why. Their answer was, "Members have been complaining about some of those companies so you can't advertise their products or services anymore."

Hmmm, great. You mind telling me exactly which ones those might be? Or do you want me to guess?

It's almost like they get off on frustrating the advertisers...

 

I totally agree with you. I have used it also after getting the coupons and i had to write an ad 30 times before they approved it. What i did was make a related website on a domain and then after they got approved i redirected it to my UK offer pages. HAHAHA the facebook fools didn't sniff anything about it. The conversions are horrible also. I had more than 7 billion impressions. And only about 6 people signed up out out of 1000 people who clicked.

 

Hum I don't have any problems... got 300$ or so in promo codes, the ads were quickly approved and.. they perform better than adwords

 

I think it all depends on what you are trying to promote with your site. If you are promoting an upscale product, I think Facebook is probably just about the worst place to promote your site because of its young user base. Thanks for the info though. I will definitely be leery about using them in the future!

 

Facebook is good to recruit webmasters to ad networks?

 

johndoes, I'll be happy to take your facebook account off your hands since you seem to have more than one.

Get in touch with a facebook rep, the two I've talked to have been extremely helpful.

 

None of the cup i used worked ever. If someone have some working once feel free to PM me if they work i pay you some money no problem.

Let me make that CLEAR i will not pay BEFORE i will PAY when they WORK. So no need to spam me i am not buying until they work.

 

On another forum a lot of people are saying that none of the coupons work anymore, go figure.

In addition, for these coupons to work it has to be a new account.

 

I can't believe you actually bought it ($350 coupon) ... because I get it for free ... just search it in google and you'll find it.

I've started using it early this month. The system is good, all my ads is approved.

But, it doesn't bring conversion for my ads maybe because it not suitable to advertise there. I think it will work pretty well for social site promotion.

 

Same thing here. I have one sole facebook campaign and it's profitable, because it was the only one out of 23 that got approved

 

My experience pretty much matches yours. At one point I wrote to the support begging them to just tell me what possible ad I could submit that they would actually approve. At least then I received some details about why they were rejecting it, but yes, their guidelines are completely open to interpretation, so the mood of the reviewer obviously matters a lot.

I read this story on Shoemoney's blog that makes a lot of sense regarding Facebook ads, and it may be worth it to keep trying: http://www.shoemoney.com/2009/01/26/90-failure-at-facebook-ads/

 

Facebook's responses are about as crystal clear as the responses you get from Google Adsense, lol. They will tell you what's wrong in a very vauge way. But when you ask how to fix it, what you can do to resolve it, etc., you find you are pretty much on your own.