Facebook ads - waste of money?

I know many companies make a lot of money advertising on Facebook but for me it seems like a complete waste of money.
Two weeks ago I placed an for $40 to run over three days. The estimated reach was quoted as between 13k and 19k.
After a day or so $16 had been spent and the paid reach was 738!!! I stopped the ad. At that rate the paid reach for $40 would have been 1845 - a very long way for the 13k - 19k I was told I would reach and thought I was paying for.
When I looked the next day to see what the paid reach for $30 would be for the same ad it showed 14.3k - 37.8k

 

Face book has made me some sales.

 

Maybe there something wrong with your setting... What's ur goal..?

 

Hi there! We use Facebook ads all the time here at Adversent and we find them a great way to make money. Maybe look at who you're targeting? We break our budget down to cover ad sets of small target audiences. By doing this, we can see who is responding well to our advert. If one ad set isn't getting any conversions, we turn it off and up the budget on an ad that's doing really well. Maybe have a look at where you can adjust this. We have many resources on the subject that I think you might find helpful! Have a look at http://www.adversent.com/webinar-mfv60.html for our free online workshop which looks at Facebook advertising.

 

Well first its always hard .This its part of the game in this industry ,iw was so easy all people would be milionaire .Change your startegy test another landing page etc .Learn some more ,tell us what you do and maybe we can give you some advices

 

You have to make engaging ads

 

Maybe there something wrong with your setting... What's ur goal..?

 

The "Estimated Reach" of an ad campaign on Facebook does not mean that you're going to reach all of those people. It just means that those people match the targeted elements of your add. The more you are willing to spend, the higher your reach within that number of people will be. To build a successful Facebook ad campaign, you will need to target your audience as tightly as possible. A large broad number of potential ad viewers will contain people that will ignor your ad. But the smaller, and more targeted that "Estimated Reach" is, the more likely it will be that a greater number of people will care about your compelling ad, and click on it.

Never go for the larger "estimated reach". Find the smaller "I need to see this ad" reach.

Find the people that care, not the most people possible.

 

I also don't like facebook ads, they are lying for many things. I have made some tests and proved that. Of course, it's helping in some cases, it depends what you are looking for.

 

What do you mean by "lying"?

 

Facebook has the best targeting options of any platform.

 

Agreed. I, myself, have had a great deal of success marketing via Facebook Ads. I have yet to find any marketing platform that offers and equal or greater collection of targeting options.
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i was working with an Advertising company,
many publishers will drive traffic from Facebook ads,
those were are fake. So, i suspect that it is auto generating traffic.
and swallowing their money.

 

Facebook is by far the best bang for your money for ads. Here's the problem, they are estimating how many people you're going to see for a campaign and budget targeting the people you targeted.

If you reached fewer people than they estimated -- your creative sucks.

It's not compelling or interesting enough for people to engage with so it's getting ZERO organic push and the paid push is expensive once FB realizes people don't care about what you're promoting and do care about what other people are.

 

Cheating! But as I said, it depends what you are looking for. In some cases, you can win, but in others not.

 

The "estimated reach" is a bit misleading and I can imagine that many people believe that they will at least reach this many persons when they make a decision to pay for the ads, but when fewer people are reached than the estimate it will be a major disappointment. Based on how much complaints I have read regarding fewer people reached than the estimate, I really think Facebook should be more realistic with the "estimated reach". But at the end of the day the situation is that if they were 100% honest with the estimate, Facebook ads would feel less appealing for businesses contemplating about using the platform.

 

They can't be more realistic with it because it depends on your creative. If your creative sucks, it will do poorly.

 

I understand the point you are trying to make. With advertising you need to be creative. In this case I'm talking specifically about the "estimate"
system which Facebook uses. I have seen a lot of people complaining that fewer people are reached than the estimate. If this is the case, then the "estimate" system is not working properly. I don't think it's credible to put the blame on people that buy Facebook ads and blaming them for having poor creativity. If one has to be a creativity Einstein or need to hire an advertising agency to make the ads reach the estimate, then Facebook has to tell it to businesses that want to use their advertising platform.

Right now it's more like they tell you how great Facebook ads is and how it will reach numerous people. The impression you get is that you just put an ad and you will reach the estimate. However it's misleading because otherwise there wouldn't be a situation where many people complain that they haven't reached their estimate. Facebook needs to tell people what "requirements" there are for the ads to reach the estimate.

 

@MrKing01 , you're missing my point.

Your "creative" is the image and text that you're using in your actual ad. That is the single biggest determinate in how much reach you get. If your creative sucks, the reach won't be as high as estimated because nobody will care about the ad, giving it less reach due to engagement.

Conversely, if your creative is awesome, you'll routinely do 3-10x the reach they give. Do small tests and see if your ad exceeds the estimates. If it does, scale it up.

This isn't rocket surgery.

 

You mean, "rocket science", right? Rockets rarely undergo surgery.
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