Comments for Facebook and The Myth Of Contextual Advertising

Facebook and The Myth Of Contextual Advertising

2007-12-04T10:07:03Z

There is a myth floating around that contextual advertising is going to help Facebook justify its $15 billion valuation. The myth goes something like this: because Facebook knows everything about us, it will always be able to serve perfect ads. However, the reality is more like the following:

Facebook does not know much about us
The data that Facebook has is not structured
People are not coming to Facebook to click ads

And even if all of the above were reversed, building a contextual advertising engine is far from simple - anyone who tries faces the same problem as building a personalized recommendation engine. In an earlier post on this blog, we discussed various ways that such systems work. The best example is Amazon, which uses a mix of many techniques to deliver recommendations, and took a decade to build and fine tune it to the point it is at today. So what basis is there to think that Facebook can do the same? Let's take a more in depth look at Facebook's advertising play.

]]> How much does Facebook really know about you?

A typical Facebook profile contains basic personal information - name, home town, date of birth and relationship status. Another section shows education and job history, and the rest of the profile is generally applications ranging from photos, to movies, to games, and other random stuff that people find interesting. So how much information is there for Facebook to use?

Very little actually. The site does not really know what I like. It does not know my book tastes, does not know that I am running a startup, does not know that I like Cabs and Pinots. It does not know that I am a Netflix user, that I am increasingly less tolerant of cold weather, or that I have 3 beautiful little daughters.

So Facebook does not really know sophisticated things about me. But even basic information that it ought to know is beyond its grasp. For example, if I add the Flixtster application and start displaying movies that I've rated on my profile you'd think that Facebook would learn that I like movies. But it wouldn't. Facebook's system has no idea that the Flixster application is about movies and has no idea what kind of movies are being displayed.

The Facebook platform is designed to be flexible and pluggable, but it lacks meta data about the content of the applications. So all the information that is being displayed on our profiles can not become an input into a contextual advertising engine. At least not easily. Of course Facebook can design an algorithm that runs and analyzes text in the profile pages, but such system would not be very good because a lot of guessing would have to happen. What would work, is to let each application deliver ads. Since applications know their own content, app developers know which ads are relevant. But it is unlikely that Facebook would ever go for that, since their whole play is to control the ads.

What ads are we getting today?

The ads that we get served on Facebook today are the direct result of the lack of understanding of its users. Not surprisingly, most ads are about dating. After all, if this works web wide, why not do it on Facebook? But most of the ads that I have seen are either laughable or down right offensive. Consider the one below:

Um... Didn't I say on my profile that I am married? Okay fine, but even if I was looking, I would not want my THE ONE to look like this. Would you? Jokes aside, the advertisement below, which was displayed on my company AdaptiveBlue's user group, is just completely inappropriate:

This sort of thing can cost us users, some of whom may not even realize that this is an advertisement. All they know is that they are looking at AdaptiveBlue's Facebook group and could draw misinformed conclusions.

In addition to the ads in the sidebar, Facebook is now showing advertising in the newsfeed. I understand that they want to monetize the site, but this is just really confusing. We have been trained that the news feed shows updates from our friends. This is the place that we are directed to first each time we log in to the site, and having ads there simply creates a bad user experience. Not to mention that I am a happy Netflix customer so the Blockbuster ad that I was shown did not entice me -- again, Facebook doesn't know as much about me as you might believe.

How effective are the ads on social networks?

So at least today the ads are not relevant and we are yet to see how exactly Facebook is going to learn about us. But there is also another problem, a bigger problem which is broader than just Facebook. The question is how effective will the ads be on social networks? On the surface, it's a no-brainer: every site that has traffic makes money on ads, right? But there's more to the story than just the surface.

The most effective ad play online is, of course, Google. Its big because its model is pay-per-click (CPC). That is, advertisers only pay if users actually click through to the site. Of all Google's offerings the most successful one is Google AdWords, in which contextually relevant ads are displayed on top of search results. It is so successful because a search represents intent, so users are more likely to click on ads that advertise things they are clearly actively looking for.

Most portals, media sites and social networks use a different model, based on impressions (CPM). That is they charge advertisers for each time an ad is shown, regardless of whether the user clicks. Naturally, these ads are much cheaper. And herein lies the big issue: If on social networks people do not click on ads, then the only type of ad they can possibly sell are impression based.

Right now, people are using social networks to socialize and browse, they are not actively searching for products and deals and likely, CPC would not be effective. It is still too early to tell, of course, but Fred Wilson, who writes the popular 'AVC' blog, created an ad for his firm, Union Square Ventures that illustrates, anecdotally, that users on Facebook are not interested in ads. The ad got practically no clicks, which is curious, because Fred Wilson and his firm are quite famous in tech circles and the ads were targeted at 32,000 Facebook users who declared an interest in technology.

Conclusion

As it stands, Facebook does not know all that much about us, and the ads that we are shown are not relevant as a result. The jury is still out on whether social networks can get big via highly targeted advertising. Early trials have shown that CPC is not a likely route and CPM plays are just not as interesting. Yet, Facebook is certainly very aggressively pushing for monetization, likely in preparation for a future IPO. Will they be able to turn it all around and re-invent contextual advertising? The company is full of brilliant people so it's certainly possible, but so far it does not look impressive.

What do you think about advertising opportunities on social networks? What kind of plays do you see possible and what do you think about current Facebook ads?

Comment from David Barnes on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T12:20:42Z

I don't go to Facebook to click ads, but I do go to Facebook to think about my friends and relatives.

Facebook advertisers -- offer me "social products".

Offer me:

- Adverts for restaurants that encourage me to bring my friends
- Easy ways to send "real" gifts to people I know on Facebook (it was absurd how many people bought $1 virtual gifts when it was the only gift option available)
- Cheap flights/rail tickets to go and see my friends in other countries
- Bulk buy stuff for "all my friends" -- e.g. 'customized t-shirts for your 10 best buddies for $10 each'

And you stand a chance of parting this particular fool and his money.

Comment from David Barnes on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T12:26:10Z

Facebook advertisers -- offer me "social products".

Offer me:

And you stand a chance of parting this particular fool and his money.

Comment from bernard lunn on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T12:27:40Z

Alex, thanks for a great post that brings some reality to these discussions about Facebook. Old fashioned media did well by parsing zip code to give some demographic clue (ie live in a rich or poor area) and age to give them clues about lifestage (20 year old is less likely to be married). This has been state of art for a few decades and Facebook has not advanced much beyond that.

Comment from help on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T12:34:18Z

Hi, i browing through the different sites and your article caught my attention. Was wondering if you could help me out with my final year project. I am currently a 3rd year external student of UOL.

Comment from kid mercury on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T12:53:10Z

from an advertiser's perspective, advertisers are much better off investing in creating quality content and promoting that than in CPC or CPM ads that users do not want to give their attention to -- in fact they have trained themselves to block those ads out.

IMO these social networks need to add a storefront component and work on monetizing things that way.

Comment from Matthew Griffin on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T13:22:10Z

You are posing some important questions and pointing out some obvious short-comings in the current system of contextual advertising but ultimately I think you are wrong. The reason is that you are forgetting that just 10 years ago, advertisers had almost no contextual advertising available. The best they could do was evaluate the general demographic of a particular publication or program and shoot out a shotgun spray of ads and a prayer.

Just being able to target an ad to single Hispanic females between 21 and 29 is a huge step forward in that regard. Anything else is gravy.

Comment from Mark Harrison on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T13:32:17Z

Facebook may not know that you run a startup, but it does know that I run one.

It also knows who my friends are...
... and what ads they responded well to.

It also knows what groups I'm in...
... and what ads the members of those groups responded well to.

It knows what movies/books/albums I like...
... and what ads the other fans of those movies/books/albums

I agree that it's hard to see how a valuation of $15bn is justified, but unless Facebook are employing some REALLY dumb analysts, they're going to work out decent collaborative filtering algorithms and get those click through responses up. Even if they only get up to 0.1%, that's still a lotta lotta lotta traffic.

OK - I admit - I've no evidence to suggest that its "contextual engine" actually bothers paying attention to half the stuff on my profile, or does any of this stuff (yet?) presumably because the "unstructured infomation problem" is (NP) hard... but the volume of data implied in the network is huge.

Comment from David Cushman on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T14:11:20Z

I don't think we've seen the future of advertising quite yet. That's because we haven't seen social networks which wish to do any more than aggregate eyeballs.
Old media companies are actually best equipped to succeed in finding the right solutions because we want to retain communities we have worked long and hard at creating - rather than gather a huge hill of people and then sell to the highest bidder.
I've fleshed this out here:
http://fasterfuture.blogspot.com/2007/12/established-media-will-have-last-laugh.html

best dc

Comment from John Bailo on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T16:56:02Z

Google is so large and controls such (65%) big percentage of search, that they are bound to get some ads to work and get click through. However, this is a very wasteful approach overall and I would expect there to be a significant "burn rate" of customers who try AdSense, see it fail, and move on.

Contextual is a Holy Grail of advertising and data mining (lump in business intelligence) but just because people use the words, doesn't mean they've achieved the actuality, as your article clearly documents.

Comment from Gleb Tulukin on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T17:06:24Z

Facebook does not know much about users based on user profile but an FB Application depending on the nature of application might know a lot about its users.

"Food fight" app knows how many carrots and bananas you've thrown to your buddies. Not much value for advertisers.

"The boaters" application has user base of devoted boat owners and knows exact boat type, either powerboat or sailboat, each of them has Perfect place for any marine vendor to advertise. The "Causes" application knows who made donations for what. Also perfect place for target advertisement.

Let Facebook worry about justifying 15 bln, if you are an app vendor think how you can build user base attractive to advertisers.

On the other hand, Facebook knows who uses what applications and can use it for contextual advertising also. Why do you think it uses only whatever you put to your profile? It can analyze all your activities (not only applications).

Comment from omglol on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T21:33:21Z

Facebook know you have some kewl unibrow

Comment from fak3r on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T21:40:51Z

Thanks for reminding me why I don't visit/belong to facebook/myspace/etc, and I agree, without enough data, their ads fail to menance. I've had the above 'nudie' ads on a few blogs I've hit today...not what you want to see at work, inappropriete, and not even matching any of the content on the blog.

Comment from Garzilly on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T21:45:16Z

Facebook doesnt know you have a sweet unibrow

Comment from Andrew on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T21:47:36Z

What about all of us who use Adblock Plus with the EasyElement+EasyList subscription and never see an ad, Facebook or otherwise? I'm not interested in ads, I don't click on ads, and I like to pay attention to a sites content and not be distracted by irrelevant boxes. For me personally, I don't buy items or services based on ads (this is more true online than in the real world, but it holds true in both). If I need/want something, I go research it and find what looks like the best product based on reviews and opinions, and then find a reputable but cheap retailer.

Comment from Wayne Pan on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T21:51:46Z

Don't worry I received a manhunt.net ad when I clearly state that I'm interested in women.

http://waynepan.com/2007/11/29/i-thought-facebooks-ad-targetting-is-supposed-to-be-good/

Comment from Mr. S on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T21:52:34Z

Facebook is able to parse you books/movies/etc. metadata. Just look at your network statistics page: http://jhu.facebook.com/networks/stats.php?nk=16777271 (thats my link... to get yours, visit a Network page and click "See more stats")

They also had a zeitgeist-like tracker that allowed one to see how different items had shifted places in their respective categories.

Comment from Dan on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T22:10:15Z

You raise some interesting points, however I think facebook knows more about you than you might think. Think about all of those "this is what I'm currently doing" messages people put up. I'd bet that give some pretty good data to facebook.

Comment from Jack on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T22:10:36Z

I enjoyed the article, but I found it odd that you mention that facebook knows nothing about you. While this does not pertain to every single user on facebook, from my viewing of user profiles and feeds which show their changes, people love to populate and update their interests section which is full of information about them. In my personal section, facebook knows I love movies with Harrison Ford, or more generally action movies as Independence Day is also in the list. It knows that I listen to Dave Matthews Band and the Red Hot Chilli Peppers. It knows what books I like, movies I like, TV shows I like and music I like.

If on the week of Dave Matthews new release, facebook ran ads to everyone who said they have interest in Dave Matthews wouldn't that be perfectly targeted advertising. What about the new Indiana Jones movie that quite a few are anticipating greatly to action/Harrison Ford nuts. Or Cloverfield!

Even recently with their new feature where you are able to be a ‚Äúfan‚Äù of certain people or groups. I am a fan of Dave Matthews Band and Kevin Rose (creator of Digg, which is how I found your site btw) Facebook could easily run ads to all those who are fans of Kevin Rose on any of his many ventures. It might not be as robust as Amazon, but I completely disagree with your assertion that facebook knows nothing about me. Really the only place that knows more is google.

Comment from Simon on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T22:15:11Z

I would have to differ with your opinion of Facebook right now and a large part of this article.

First off from the beginning of the article:

* Facebook does not know much about us - how do you know?
* The data that Facebook has is not structured - again, how do you know?
* People are not coming to Facebook to click ads - and finally, how do you know?

1) Facebook does have the ability to know a whole lot more about you than 99% of all other sites you visit. Additionally, Age,Sex, and Location is often enough information for most major advertisers to consider making a play in Facebook. If you would look into information retrieval, neural networks, and basic AI; one could easily build a database to network your information with the information of your "friends", the items you add to your profile, the content of the messages on your wall and in your inbox, and link you to all of your friends information as well and make pretty accurate generalizations in most cases.

2) Google is not always the most effective ad play. It depends on the advertiser and their goals. Many companies I work for don't always see the best results on AdWords because of the types of campaigns they are running, generally Branding campaigns where direct sales or leads are not taken from the destination URL. Therefore CTRs are generally low.

Additionally, the CPC model is also not always the most effective. Again, it depends on the advertiser and the goals of their campaigns. Recently, one of our client's has seen much greater success (ROI) using the Cost Per Action model from Google.

3)What ads are we getting today on Facebook? Well considering Facebook's advertising program is a new born (2007)... you're right... not much. In fact, out of the 12+ major client's that I work with, only one has considered Facebook so far for 2007. Why? It's the end of the year and for most major advertisers, all of their advertising dollars have been allocated for 2007 to other things already. Now, when 2008 comes around, thats going to be a different story.

And, the ones who are advertising on Facebook may not be properly using the system and just showing their ads to everyone and paying for it. Maybe they're branding campaigns and they don't care about click throughs?

And Finally 4) your USV example from Fred Wilson. What exactly does USV sell or provide? What area of technology does his product/services fall into? and What area of technology are facebook users really interested in? (are they high tech geeks, low tech geeks, or do they just like pretty cell phones and therefore marked the technology box?)

Maybe it's not because facebook ads "dont work" but maybe it's because Fred's ads weren't as targeted as he thought they would be. Yes, facebook's demographical targeting isn't perfect, but neither is Google's (oh wait... what demographical targeting?).

So in conclusion, I'm not trying to bash or downplay your article and no I am not a Facebook, myspace, google, mac fanboy, I just think it's a premature prediction. Facebook's entire advertising program is too young to be judged at this point, especially considering most major advertising dollars have already been budgeted so far this year.

Rewrite this article again a year from now and I would bet we will be seeing things a lot differently.

Comment from Jack9 on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T22:28:54Z

(For sake of argument I'm going to ignore the fact that Demographic targetting is what this bogus article is about and we'll just substitute "contextual" for "demographic")

Any thinking that the "contextual" data isn't categorized and structured is rather naiive. How do you think adservers store the information? There's literally as many buckets as there are kinds of information. A cookie stores up to 4k of data PER COOKIE. Your gender takes up 1 bit. Your age groups (even fuzzy matching) takes up less than 32 bits (using binary masking). Since the author clearly doesnt know anything about computer science, we'll move on. Any site(s) the parent company owns can be used to drop information on you that's used in contextualized serving on Facebook. With cross-site scripting you'll find that the information Facebook collects isn't the only information that the ad network uses to serve the ads. Beyond that, let's talk about real contextualization. In advertising, knowing you are male is enough to serve contextual based ads. Knowing just the details listed, I can buy inventory for 3 cents per and sell ads that net me well over 2 dollars per without actively contacting anyone. The market says "me me me" for contextualized data. Now multiply that by the number of ads served, per day. The valuation of 15M is very very low.

P.S.
For anyone interested in how online adserving really works, substitute Demographic for Contextual in the above critique.

Comment from BillyJack on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T22:47:57Z

Maybe it is the power of your UNIBROW that makes there advertising work.

Comment from Jamie on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T23:10:29Z

You forgot the huge lump of interests people put into their profiles.

Comment from Jack10 on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T23:28:10Z

@Jack9

don't know if it this was a typo or not, but the reason you think a $15 million dollar facebook valuation might be because it's being valued at $15 BILLION.

Comment from Jack10 on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T23:29:32Z

*might be "very very low"

Comment from gordon on 2007-12-04

2007-12-04T23:52:29Z

all of the information facebook knows about us is information that we have given it. how many people really tell the truth when they fill what they do and do not like.
http://www.buythatlocally.com

Comment from asus on 2007-12-04

2007-12-05T02:07:40Z

Last time I checked, people load their facebook profiles with interests (Music, TV, Books, places, etc...) Not really sure what you mean they know nothing about you...

Comment from Chi-chi Ekweozor on 2007-12-04

2007-12-05T03:41:18Z

Great post, Alex.

I agree with you that social ads will increase the signal to noise ratio on Facebook and prove an unwelcome distraction.

However, I disagree with you on the notion of contextual advertising systems being the same as personalised recommendation engines.

I think you are confusing the two things somewhat.

Facebook‚Äôs Social Ads are about ‚ÄòTrusted Referrals‚Äô not about ‚ÄòRecommendations‚Äô.

The distinction is important.

Most referrals work on the basis that there is something to be gained from the referring action.

Recommendation systems like Amazon‚Äôs work because they are based on prior knowledge about what a user has done or his or her ‚Äòinterests‚Äô.

‚ÄòTrusted referral‚Äô advertising on Facebook seems to offer no incentive to the user other than opportunity to ‚Äòshare‚Äô information.

You can argue that to make social ads work, advertisers should provide users with an incentive to take part in recommendations.

I‚Äôve expanded more on this here:

http://tinyurl.com/28e2sv

Comment from Stuart on 2007-12-04

2007-12-05T06:35:48Z

we've found facebook flyers to be pretty poor too http://conclave.open.ac.uk/SocialCommunications/?p=42 and elsewhere on the blog.

the best option for us were the basic flyers that allowed us to target networks - this teamed up with cpc could work for facebook.

Comment from Dora on 2007-12-04

2007-12-05T07:30:38Z

Well whether to click on the add or not to click is your own choice. Even if you click the add there's no harm in it, just checking won't harm, may be it might be of some use, Like this service i saw the other day while surfing. Its called MoDazzle. Through which you can access facebook on mobile without internet. you check facebook anywhere & anytime. www.modazzle.com?channel=CM&camp=Facebook
The same way something as useful as this thing is advertised, its definitely a benefit checking it. Even if its on facebook or any other.

Comment from Jose Miguel Cansado on 2007-12-05

2007-12-05T15:22:20Z

Welcome to Irrational Exuberance 2.0.

Ebay paid for Skype a few billion, only to find out one year later, that it was not worth it.

If you can not put the business case numbers and need to justify them with abstract synergies, beware...

Potential synergies are being over valued,
...just like in the old times of late nineties.

Comment from Freddie on 2007-12-05

2007-12-05T15:55:25Z

I buy Facebook Ads on a CPC basis and the targeting I can do leads to well converting visitors. The CTR is poor but seeing how I'm paying CPC that's not an issue. I just wish I could get more volume for the niche I'm targeting.

Comment from Chi-chi Ekweozor on 2007-12-05

2007-12-05T17:15:34Z

News just in...

Facebook is allowing users to turn off Beacon.

More on the Facebook blog:
http://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?blog_id=company

Commentary on Real Fresh TV:
http://tinyurl.com/2ap8qe

Comment from David on 2007-12-05

2007-12-05T22:59:38Z

You're absolutely right, Alex. Facebook's efforts around Beacon (whatever becomes of it) are proof that they're not efficiently able to monetize the data they have on us today. They may be in the future, but today they're not, because if they could--they'd be doing it.

So instead, Beacon lets them reach out to sites like fandango and epicurious--sites built around specific topics and tasks--and collect valuable, contextual, and structured data points on our behaviors. They then post those pieces of data in our feeds, and they become highly relevant, targeted ads aimed at our friends. Even though those data points took place on another site, they're relevant to our friends because they're presented in the context of US.

I don't know what kind of eCPMs facebook is getting on their standard (non-Beacon) ads, but I bet they're nowhere near those of fandango and epicurious, because those sites have all that valuable, contextual data to begin with. That's what beacon is for Facebook--an effort to earn CPMs closer to what all the beacon partners are getting.

Comment from Jon on 2007-12-05

2007-12-05T23:37:17Z

The whole concept of "targeted advertising" is flawed. There is not a single person on earth who wants to be "sold" anything. Any salesperson who has been on the business and studied sales and marketing knows this. Nobody wants to buy anything. What they Might want to do is trade cash for something they want. Advertising is, and has always been, a crock of Bullicus.
Look at it this way: Some guy you've never met walks up to you on the street as you're busily creating your day. He calls you BY NAME and says, "Dude, don't you want one of these scantily clad young women? We think everybody else does!"
What would you do then, assuming you have scruples, of course.
There is something flawed in this.

Comment from John R. on 2007-12-05

2007-12-06T00:00:37Z

What has impressed me no end with facebook is that from when I joined (Facebook didn't hit my social circles until April, due to me being in Norway) was the incredible experience of all clean design, valuable features and ZERO resentment factor. None. I absolutely loved the whole idea, from the user demographic, to the fact that it delivered unheard-of interaction possibilities with faint aquaintances, longtime friends to the zero-effort imaging and tagging system. Facebook may be hyped, but there's real user value fuelling that hype and traffic.

What I'm more concerned about, is not whether or not Facebook manages to be nobel-quality monetization (it's pretty much 'just' an engineering challenge..). I'm more worried about what will become of the social utility I use daily for my socializing needs. Will it choose the way of Microsoft by monetizing my user experience to 'death by ten-thousand needles of spam' ? The Microsoft stake and the $15billion valuation might be signs in that direction.

What should still be possible, is to do it 'the Google way', building long-term business by choosing to deliver a product that delivers more function than resentment.

This user value-driven non-intrusive advertisement is a tried and tested business model, but for some reason, there's depressingly few companies that seem to have grasped the concept.

I still have my fingers crossed that Facebook won't devolve into a spamvertizing horror-show. Otherwise I'll be personally offended. If so should happen, there will be a business model in saying 'At least we're not Facebook'(cue: Google), and I as a user will have learned not to put my social eggs in a basket that can't be trusted.

Comment from francis Idada on 2007-12-05

2007-12-06T02:41:18Z

For once, I agree totally with an article here.

Facebook should reduce it's valuation to maybe 1 billion dollars, using a average revenue of 100 million per annum and save itself all this headache from misjiving.

Using statistics, it is easier to do population studies than using the damn face book ad targeting system. If you are an advertiser, using facebook in its current form would be a waste of time. What facebook would have to do to get close to the revenue that yahoo gets would be to do some web 1.0 advertising, larger banner ads, flash and get it's ad's on popular ads.

Aside from this, facebook is a joke.

Comment from Ricki on 2007-12-06

2007-12-06T19:10:31Z

I'm a search engine advertising "veteran" and have been "experimenting" with the new Facebook CPC/CPM advertising. As someone above said, the CTR is low, however I have also found a very high conversion rate for those who click through. With the volume that FB offers, the low CTR is not a big issue for me, if I can get a large number of clicks and then the conversions.

I'm advertising about a free web site that is offers college admissions planning resources. The ability to target high schools students in a particular age range is very existing. I can't do that on Google or Yahoo. My target audience is on FB, and I know that many of them are interested in what my site has to offer.

However the FB CPC/CPM program is extremely immature, and still seems to bear vestiges of being a "flyer" program for a low-budget entity advertising a one-time short-term event or fly-by-night product.

The immaturity of the program may have some direct relation to how well it functions for users. Advertisers are not able to change ad content or targeting after an ad is created to try to improve response. One of the worst, and most ridiculous aspects -- unless I am missing a key feature (and if I am please someone post and let me know!!!) -- you cannot spend more than $50 a day per campaign, and possibly that maximum is per "account" per day.

At $0.25 per click -- that's 200 clicks a day maximum. I achieved that in under 2 hours. The ad wouldn't display until I upped it to $0.25 per click (not that FB advised me of this, I had to figure it out). So is FB trying to limit advertisers to 50 clicks a day?

$50 a day? Or $50 per "campaign" per day? This is not a valid threshold for a real business.

Give advertises the ability to manage the program better, and maybe it will perform better. It's a toy program.

Comment from Ricki on 2007-12-06

2007-12-06T20:23:10Z

Just to clarify the above. I was FINALLY advised by FB that for some reason a new account is limited to $50 a day, which will be increased as it is successfully billed for charges. But no time frame on how that works. Without that limitation, the program could be much more successful for me.

However, my other comments about the manageability of the program still stand.

Comment from BlueMountain II on 2007-12-06

2007-12-07T05:06:54Z

FaceBook will go down in history as the second BlueMountain.
http://smartstartup.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/10/its-deja-vu-all.html

Comment from Fer on 2007-12-07

2007-12-07T15:12:45Z

Do you read magazines to see the ads??
Do you watch tv to see the ads??

What information has tv or magazines about you??

May be facebook is not the perfect tool for ads, but it's quite better than others.

Comment from Niall Larkin on 2007-12-22

2007-12-22T10:55:00Z

Thanks Alex. That so needed to be said for such a long time. And you said it so well :)

Comment from Glen on 2007-12-27

2007-12-27T14:48:31Z

Hah, I'm sorry but if you know anything about computers, you will be using Firefox with adblock, and won't get any ads on facebook; bar the one's in the mini-feed of course.