Facebook Ads for Affiliate marketers
Author: Tim Nash
We recently discussed a simple way to get highly targeted traffic through Stumbleupon based on stumble ads, well Stumbleupon is not the only Social Media site offering this level of targeting Facebook is also offering targeted advertising.
Walled Gardens
At first glance Facebook is offering just another PPC service for advertisers and while the rates are currently cheap they will no doubt rise quickly. So why is advertising on Facebook a good idea for affiliate marketers?
Facebook is a huge walled garden full of unsuspecting people easy pickings for a marketer at least it is at the moment, Facebook Ads launched yesterday and since then 100,000 ‘ad pages’ have been created an ad page is the free part of Facebook ads, its the second part we are interested in. However this says that we are not alone in seeing the pickings in the garden and to get maximum benefit you will need to work fast.
Getting your Mini Site ready
Lets take a simple example site (please note unlike the Stumbleupon post I’m still testing and have no accurate figures) same principle as before, aim it at British males in there late teens early 20s with the same style submit and site. For more information on the case study see the previous post.
If your lucky you already have several of these style sites ready to go and maybe you were testing Stumbleupon ads. If not get going I know I spent some money but even with $50 or less you can get up a half decent site.
Setting up a campaign
So lets get going, Like the Stumbleupon ads we want to geo-target as our Email submit is also geo-targeted. We also want to define a gender and age range, though we are less worried about picking subject matter this time as we will be writing an actual ad.
Getting an ad up is a 4 stage affair
1) Provide a URL of the site or page to send users to, notice you can also choose to target Facebook pages as.
2) Target users, selecting location, gender, etc notice you can also define right down to if they are in college and year shame its very Americanised so is not really helpful for us
3) Create an advert, if you have ever done any PPC you will know the deal, the important difference is Social actions, by clicking this you can create handles which have the potential to bring indirect traffic also notice you can attach an image, hmm I wonder what we will use?
4) Select if you want to run a PPC or impression campaign, again this should be familiar to anyone who has used any PPC before, bidding is currently very low but expect it to shoot up.
Start the campaign off, job done your bringing in highly targeted traffic I would at least while the prices low pay purely for PPC. Facebook has opened a huge door and no doubt the price will shoot up very quickly if you can be an early adopter then this is a huge opportunity.
What’s been your experience with Facebook ads, have you previously used Facebook flyers? which converts better for you?
Alex
from Andasearch-Gets Results!2007-11-08 19:55:33
I didn’t test them yet,
but as far as i read about it,very poor results untill now.
Tim Nash
2007-11-08 20:01:33
Hi Alex I’m guessing your talking about Facebook flyers rather then the new Facebook ads which were only launched in the last day or so, which thanks to real time reporting means people are starting to report stats quite quickly and offering positive reports.
But if you have seen something to the contrary please do send us a link it will be good to get a balanced view
Alex
from Andasearch-Gets Results!2007-11-08 20:11:15
Ohh..yep..
Indeed..i was talking about flyers..sorry about that.
Surely i will try the new ads and i will let you know about the results.
Laura H
from www.christmasgiftsblog.co.uk2007-11-09 13:05:45
Tim,
My experience of social ads hasn’t been great so far.
I set up a couple of campaigns yesterday and the results are:
1 suspended - helpfully they don’t tell you why, but I have read the terms thoroughly and can’t see a problem. I’ve included a brand logo in the image so don’t know if this is maybe the issue?
Other - no impressions or clicks yet. I’m a little surprised because I set my initial cpc very high just to get some quick results in but perhaps its because my targeting wasn’t very specific (just people in GB between the ages of 18&60) GOing to make this more targetted and see what happens.
Richard
from Makak Media2007-11-09 20:52:23
Hi Tim, only been using the ads for a client today but no click through rate so far and had to adjust the bid to get any impressions at all. Targeting people between 25 and 45 years old in London who like confidence, health fitness, or smoking so quite a tight niche. Adjusting the ad anytime now so will report back.
Tim Nash
2007-11-10 14:49:03
Thanks guys its been interesting to hear your feedback, I have been running a campaign for UK males between 18 to 25 my click rate hasn’t been great but my conversion rate is great however
Richard
from Makak Media2007-11-11 12:08:19
One thing that is annoying are the keywords, for instance I know that people have within their ‘interests’ things like ‘flying’ or ‘jelly’ but if they are not in the keywords database you cannot use them to target people. Why can’t you use any keyword?
Tim Nash
2007-11-11 16:54:38
Richard you don’t seem to be alone there http://blogpond.com.au/2007/11/11/facebook-social-ads-what-a-waste-of-time/
Meg has been having similar troubles
Facebook Social Ads - What a waste of time | Dipping into the Blogpond
2007-11-12 01:19:04
[...] It seems that I was trying to open this link in a new window - my bad (thanks Tim, for pointing it out). Still it doesn’t really tell me [...]
Richard
from Makak Media2007-11-13 19:21:47
Well after 4 days of varying ads eventually going from targeted to just everyone in London the results are poor. My conclusion would be that Facebook ads are suited to social products/businesses, understandable really but it was an interesting experiment all the same. Maybe if the keywords were opened up things would be different but I think not.
koderius
from same problem here2007-12-03 13:42:42
I am trying to promote a user written guide for money making - after i opened my own website i found out that this area is the leprous colony of the web.
ANYWAYS …. i add two ads in FACEBOOK , cpc high ..
very targeted ..
after a couple of days not even one impression !
maybe that`s because sites like mine are the outcasts ?
maybe this Sh#% does not work?