What were the expectations you took away from my post?
"cannot expect an even distribution across the demographics"
- I mentioned that if there were even a modicum of distribution. I was driving home the idea that 1) if we assume a tiny level of distribution across the three geographies, then I should see something from JP and KR. But, that didn't happen; and 2) if targeting multiple geos is, in fact, ineffective, then the option to target multiple geos shouldn't even been an option if FB really wanted people to be successful with their ads. Furthermore, I actually DID target a single geo, and even THAT didn't work.
"You aren't paying enough to saturate all channel"
- NOW you've gotten to one of the main cruxes of my post. As I wrote on the post an in a few replies below.
The point I want to drive home is that there is a segment of the population doing business online and, for better or worse, including FB as part of their ad strategy. FB knows this and makes the entire ad process CHEAP and EASY, knowing full well that these ad buyers are going to receive crap for engagement. FB makes it so easy for new FB page owners to believe that they can drop $5 here and $10 there to promote anything--a post, their page, and even their website. I gather that FB WANTS these page owners to pay these small amounts 30 times to play trial-and-error, even though doing so still only puts these page owners 1) up against larger budgets, and 2) in front of garbage accounts that are only cleaned up once a year in FB's annual sweep.
If it's a matter of paying enough, then why bother encouraging people to pay $5 here and $10 there to promote knowing that it'll be a waste?
You raise a completely fair point, and conceptually I agree with you.
Again, this entire example rests on the assumption that bots DO exist, which it sounds like they do based on everyone's comments so far.
The point I want to drive home is that there is a segment of the population doing business online and, for better or worse, including FB as part of their ad strategy. FB knows this and makes the entire ad BUYING process cheap and easy, knowing FULL well that these ad buyers are going to receive crap for engagement.
Before confirming my purchase, if FB gave me a warning saying something along the lines of "based on your targeting and how much you're paying for this ad, about 10% of your engagement will be from real people," then at the very least FB has both acknowledged the risk and done something to manage my expectations. Perhaps we wouldn't even been having this exchange.
But, FB doesn't. They keep quiet about this, allowing the farms to exist to make it seem as those unsuspecting business owners are actually getting what they paid for. That's the scam in all of this.
Thanks for chiming in. A few comments regarding your guidelines.
1) Change your targeting to reduce fraud clicks.
- I did, and I actually had M, the Facebook Global Marketing Specialist, comment that my targeting was solid. If this becomes a game of guess-and-check, then that's borderline gambling. I had a pretty specific target group, and that got me nowhere.
Also, whenever FB responds with "you need to improve your targeting," I interpret that as "stop sucking, and then you'll be awesome."
2) Always use the hack mentioned by adambratt.
- I incidentally tried that with one of my previous ads. No luck. Try try again?
3) Focus on post quality and virality.
- This sounds like a bit of 1 and 2 put together. Again, when FB gave me this canned response, it started to sound like "stop sucking, and then you'll be awesome." My messaging was both clean and direct. Even for the Japan market (with specific targeting), I wrote IN JAPANESE "whether your on the train, at home, or in school, listen to my podcast to help you improve your English listening skills." Again, nada.
Do you have any specific anecdotes with your own business and FB advertising that you could share?
Thanks for mentioning Google, I'll research it to see how it could help me.
The Veritasium videos on my post provide a decent counterpoint to the idea that there's a potential "credibility" upside of having a bunch of fake accounts like your page.
For example, let's say you have a mix of 90% fake likes, and 10% real/organic likes, presumable because they saw your page, saw all of the likes, and thought, "I want to be in on this."
Now, let's say that I post something, and chances are that it's only going to be seen by 100 people. This means that whatever I post will be put in front of 90 garbage accounts and in front of only 10 people who I actually want to target. Unfortunately I can't target based on fake vs. organic accounts.
If I want to increase that 10ppl number, then I'll have to pay more to increase the visibility across the entire population. Let's say I pay $10 to get 200 people to see what I've posted, then 180 fake accounts see it, and only 20 real/organic people see it.
Unsuspecting businesses of any kind, and especially small ones, can't afford to waste money on this kind of mess.
Part and parcel of me writing this post was to speak up about this on behalf of other folks who seemed to have experienced the same exact issue of wasting their own ad money trying to increase visibility through Facebook.
FB makes reaching out to their support a pain in the ass. Since I was somehow able to get in touch with someone, and I collected what I felt was decent evidence that this is happening, and I was actually able to show that evidence to them, I figured it'd be worth putting something online as an additional warning to others not to bother advertising on FB, and, more importantly, speak up and call FB out on this mess.
- Re: cultural differences in Facebook use, not fraud.
Plausible. Based on this and the previous ads I've run in E/SE Asia, though, I'm still under the believe that something is askew.
Re: Japan/Korea
- Yes, collectivist culture, conservative buying habits (e.g. not wanting to be first mover, etc.) can very well translate to FB activities.
Re: VN, etc
- Agreed, they play faster and looser there with their likes and friending.
Re: Your hack
- It's buried at the bottom of the Updates section, but I did do something very similar. As it was becoming clear to me that the VNese engagement was garbage, I figured that I still might be able to leverage that to get more conservative places like Japan and Korea to jump on board. No dice. This might have to do with how much budget I was contributing (another topic I talk about in the post).
Re: Per-country ad sets.
- Again, I did this.
I ran a boost targeting JP/VN/KR, got 100% engagement from VN. Revised the target set to focus just on Japan, crickets, and that's even AFTER there were already 300 likes for that boost, which falls in line with your hack. Ok, not crickets...I got three likes, one Japanese...and then one Cambodian and one Filipino, both living in their respective countries.
Re: Doesn't look like spam accounts.
- They look spammy or garbage to me. 18yr old girl from one of the small province towns in VN has 3,000 or 4,000 friends? Could be explained away as just cultural differences, or it could be complete garbage.
I replied above in another person's comment that it is no longer out of the real of possibility that one of FB's business models is to covertly financially support these click/like farms so that they encourage ad buyers like myself to keep spending $5 here and $10 there on advertising with the belief that it's actually working for them.
Pay some group of kids $100 in VN ($100 goes a LONG way there) to create and manage garbage accounts, and then like the smallest and newest of FB pages that pay the $5 or $10 to advertise so as to make it seem as though that person's ad is successful.
On a side note, isn't it strange that these farms seem to come from developing countries/areas?
Why wouldn't FB work harder to delete these fake accounts, especially if 1) they've been called out on it, and 2) FB page owners who have advertised in the past are pissed off about it.
If FB sweep deletes these accounts once a year, as both M and J claim, then why couldn't they increase the frequency?
The parts I didn't include in the post due to length were the previous ads (boosted posts, promote page, etc) I created and paid for before this very last one that I wrote about on my blog.
Those previous ads raised enough red flags for me to pay very close attention to my last one. That's not to say that I didn't pay close attention to the others; I was tracking data and seeing how well Japan-only targeted ads (that included both Japanese and English language) performed against Vietnam-only targeted ads, and how well those two performed against ads that targeted Japan, Vietnam, and Korea all at the same time.
The data collected and differences among the three were enough for me to conclude that something foul was afoot.
Sure, there may be 30 other variables that could've gone wrong here. However, M's verbal (via phone) approval of how I created my ad and crafted my targeting and the consistently large amounts of garbage accounts from VN leads me to believe that this entire thing was a waste.
Furthermore, again, FB makes it so easy for new FB page owners to believe that they can drop $5 here and $10 there to promote anything--a post, their page, and even their website. I gather that FB WANTS these page owners to pay these small amounts 30 times to play trial-and-error, even though doing so still only puts these page owners 1) up against larger budgets, and 2) in front of garbage accounts that are only cleaned up once a year in FB's annual sweep.
Indeed. I actually included (with links and credit) both of Veritasium's videos in the post.
The rest of my post explains in detail my own experience with this problem, including data, screenshots, and my own email correspondence with Facebook's Global Marketing Specialists.
Indeed, but the fact that this problem persists raises a few questions, not limited to:
1) WHY does this problem still exist, considering all of the resources at FB's disposal?
2) Where do these click/like farms come from, and what's in it for them?
3) Why does FB only do sweeps annually? Why not daily?
As you might've read in the Updates section of the post, I came to the conclusion that these click/like farms, although not supported by FB, are still a pleasant surprise for FB, as FB vis-a-vis these farms TRICK unsuspecting low budget ad buyers into thinking that they're still getting something for their money.
In other words:
* Big corp with multimillion dollar ad budget = we put your ad in front of your desired audience, and you get lots of quality engagement.
* Those with smaller ad budgets = we put your ad in front of garbage accounts, and you get garbage engagement. It's still engagement, though, so be happy about that.
That, or (and prep your tin foil hats for this one) one of FB's business models is to covertly financially support these click/like farms so that they encourage ad buyers like myself to keep spending $5 here and $10 there on advertising with the belief that it's actually working for them.
What were the expectations you took away from my post?
"cannot expect an even distribution across the demographics" - I mentioned that if there were even a modicum of distribution. I was driving home the idea that 1) if we assume a tiny level of distribution across the three geographies, then I should see something from JP and KR. But, that didn't happen; and 2) if targeting multiple geos is, in fact, ineffective, then the option to target multiple geos shouldn't even been an option if FB really wanted people to be successful with their ads. Furthermore, I actually DID target a single geo, and even THAT didn't work.
"You aren't paying enough to saturate all channel" - NOW you've gotten to one of the main cruxes of my post. As I wrote on the post an in a few replies below.
The point I want to drive home is that there is a segment of the population doing business online and, for better or worse, including FB as part of their ad strategy. FB knows this and makes the entire ad process CHEAP and EASY, knowing full well that these ad buyers are going to receive crap for engagement. FB makes it so easy for new FB page owners to believe that they can drop $5 here and $10 there to promote anything--a post, their page, and even their website. I gather that FB WANTS these page owners to pay these small amounts 30 times to play trial-and-error, even though doing so still only puts these page owners 1) up against larger budgets, and 2) in front of garbage accounts that are only cleaned up once a year in FB's annual sweep.
If it's a matter of paying enough, then why bother encouraging people to pay $5 here and $10 there to promote knowing that it'll be a waste?