Comments on: Facebook’s Desperate Attempt to Prove Its Value (Test it Yourself)

By: don-benis

don-benis — Sat, 08 Feb 2014 20:48:58 +0000

don-benis

By: Bryan Eisenberg

Bryan Eisenberg — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 14:46:35 +0000

In reply to Katrina Moody. Katrina I am glad you are testing it on your own. Just don't follow the crowd blindly.

By: Katrina Moody

Katrina Moody — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 12:54:38 +0000

I have seen mixed reviews and have been trying my own hand at targeted ads on FB – I did pull in more sales on Cyber Monday, but I can’t validate that it was because of my ad – I had friends sharing my sweet deal after all *grin*

By: TheGrok

TheGrok — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 20:21:46 +0000

In reply to KristaNeher. @KristaNeher Agreed. But what is Facebook defining as "exposure" is at question. They are not going to solve this issue by doing a land grab for credit on the marketing spend. I wish they invested their brain power and programming skills to re-think the nature of social advertising. Not pushing advertising in the face of their user experience and frustrating them as well. This becomes the sounds of the bell ringing in their death march not the bells of success from wall street.

By: KristaNeher

KristaNeher — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 19:25:11 +0000

It seems to me that the answer is somewhere in the middle – the IBM model is only considering referrals to sales, and Facebook is taking credit for everything. We know from thousands of years of branding research that exposure over time = purchases.

IMHO, part of the issue is that we are trying to measure something for Facebook that we don’t even measure for other channels. How many referrals did the commercials bring in? Or the billboard? Or the newspaper ad?

We know that it is a combination of touchpoints that leads to purchase, and any attempt to directly put a number beside the impact that one channel has in isolation will always involve many assumptions and ignore other factors that drive purchases.

By: JeffreyEisenberg

JeffreyEisenberg — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 18:41:49 +0000

In reply to ferkungamaboobo.

@ferkungamaboobo”If you torture the data long enough, it will confess.” – Ronald Coase

By: ferkungamaboobo

ferkungamaboobo — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 17:43:04 +0000

We did a poll to validate the IBM findings and saw the Social Media had a solid branding effect, leading to about 25% of respondents buying a product after seeing a Social Media post or ad. (By comparison, about 35% of respondents bought after viewing an email)

http://www.searchinfluence.com/2012/11/black-friday-cyber-monday-sales-data/

I’m not sure if the “flat display” Marketplace ads are the main driving factor here — Organic and Sponsored Stories (which often show in the News Feed) are most likely the highest converting, as they are affected by the filter bubble and will usually have personalized social proof along with them. Twitter is also included here, as opposed to just Facebook, but I think view-through conversions do occur, especially for brand-aware users — in that way, it’s like a TV ad.

Is it a clean attribution? Not likely, but that’s what we get paid for, I guess.

By: techmirth

techmirth — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 17:39:29 +0000

In reply to TheGrok. @TheGrok Amazing, or not. I only remember seeing two ads on the Recently viewed, and one ad in the See All. Between this and the huge drop in users who see your page's feed if you stop paying to promote your feed it leaves a guy pretty disappointed and frustrated. Like tasting used, cold coffee grounds when you were expecting fresh, hot Kona.

By: TheGrok

TheGrok — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:50:35 +0000

In reply to techmirth. @techmirth Yes, some people see that and some people "see all". Just click on the link in the post to view all the ads.

By: techmirth

techmirth — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 16:48:23 +0000

Facebook didn’t give me the “See all’ option. Instead it asked me to “Create an Ad” https://www.evernote.com/shard/s2/sh/4e11ecfd-6ddf-4747-918d-b365162e79dc/5346412b77095a77ca539710cb50a737