In the latest video I talked to great length and positives about Facebook ads. I felt that I need to clarify that a bit. I posted a picture of one (ad) in particular that had a few thousands people and I got about 30% likes out of that reach – A great result. Well turns out perhaps too great.
After speaking to a marketing friend of mine he reminded me about fake accounts as he investigated this particular post and noticed that it’s all female, middle east, Asian sounding names, accounts with similar profile photos, first name only (or obvious fake names) and few friends.. I am aware of these myself but had targeted many of his identifications this
- Female – personal advertising choice by me so this checks out.
- Middle east and Asian sounding names – One big difference from past promotions was to try to target different types of emerging markets, India, Indonesia and Pakistan. This was hence expected.
- Accounts with similar profile pictures – This was something I hadn’t really thought about but could agree some out of a 5% sample was indeed very similar.
- Few Comments – Indeed, the ad (based on a blog article) had zero comments.
- First names only or obvious fake names – This was indeed a greater sample size, perhaps as great as 10-20% of the total pool. This was indeed strange. Again, this could be a cultural or demographic difference, but worth noticing.
- Few friends and few images – While some accounts had 400+ friends, some ahd as low as 20. With that said; When I had a personal Facebook account I had around 98 friends which in some eyes could potentially be very few and a very locked down profile where I only had profile pictures and no personal/tagged images.
As such, many of his indications had reason for me to question the actual value of the target reached on Facebook. As a test I turned of the emerging markets from the demographic reach and as such I lowered the LIKE rate with 100%. That’s right! For a full 8 hours I’ve received 0 new likes down from about 1 per minute at it’s most rapid rate.
THAT if anything is very very strange indeed. I will run this ad through out it’s period of 14 days and be able to see the direct result of this change.
My friend also sent a few links that is very interesting to read. They indeed highlight the very same issues I was having with advertising towards emerging market (but on a much, much higher budget). I think you should read these to, if you are going to target Facebook as your advertisement platform with or without emerging markets! Remember, if it seems to good to be true, it’s proboly not.
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/mans-600000-facebook-ad-disaster-2014-2
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/how-fake-facebook-likes-are-created-2015-3?r=UK&IR=T
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