Question
Hello,
So I setup a campaign to rent a desk at my web agency. No one's using the desk, so we figured we could rent it out to someone in the area.
So I setup a Facebook CPC campaign to a very specific target audience:
• Location: Within 25 miles radius of my location
• Behaviours: Small business owners
• Age: 24 - 65+
• Desktop: News Feed or Right Column
Results Day 1:
Max Bid: $0.70 (suggested was between $0.56 - 0.86)
Clicks: 2
Frequency: 3.48
Reach: 601
Results Day 2:
Max Bid: $0.70 (suggested was between $0.56 - 0.86)
Clicks: 4
Frequency: 2.95
Reach: 632
Results Day 3:
Max Bid: $0.70 (suggested was between $0.56 - 0.86)
Clicks: 0
Frequency: 2.51
Reach: 336 (decline begins)
Results Day 4:
Max Bid: $0.70 (suggested was between $0.56 - 0.86)
Clicks: 0
Frequency: 2.36
Reach: 55 (huge decline)
Results Day 5 (today):
Max Bid: $0.70 (suggested was between $0.86–$1.77) ---> They doubled
Clicks: 0
Frequency: 0
Reach: 0
So looking at this, Facebook's ad platform essentially said this to me:
"Look buddy, you don't want to spend on a CPM model, so we'll force you to start to pay more for your CPC because your offer is so niche, that you'll waste our impression inventory and not even make us a penny -- pay up or we don't help you."
It seems like no matter how you try to setup your offer to be advantageous for yourself, Facebook's ad platform forces you to pay up to get a chance to sell what you want to sell. In this case, would it be worth keeping the CPC model if they'll just keep on raising the price for me? Or should I switch to CPM and hope that I'll find a buyer before I run out of budget?
The same problem is happening with Twitter. I setup a Lead Generation campaign, and due to the niche-like offer, we're not getting many signups. Twitter dropped our impression count from 347/day to less than 50 a day now.
I wasn't interested to take a CPM model for this campaign, because I found that running it through a CPC model guarantees you a better chance that you'll spend only on individuals somewhat interested in the offer (and I'm building my retargeting lists in the same time as tracking pixels have been setup). In a CPM model, you technically just assign a budget for XYZ impressions, and hope for the best.
P.S. I also have a Google AdWords + Search network campaign running which is hyper segmented (single keyword ad groups), so that's been taken care of. I wanted to give Facebook and Twitter a shot for this offer given that we can target quite nicely in those networks -- but it seems like they're not really keen on helping offers like ours flourish in their inventory just yet...
Any thoughts from other professionals?
Answer
Hi,
"Look buddy, you don't want to spend on a CPM model, so we'll force you to start to pay more for your CPC because your offer is so niche, that you'll waste our impression inventory and not even make us a penny" - love it!
As you probably know, Facebook advertising is based on the auction principle - every single minute Facebook holds thousands, even millions of mini auctions for the limited advertising space on the platform. The same way your ads get a 'quality score' on Google Adwords, Facebook will also use plenty of algorithms to give some kind of a quality score to your ads - if they're good, you might pay less, if they're worse, you'll need to pay more to get your ad shown, otherwise you'll loose the auctions and your ads won't be shown at all.
The reason your ads stopped being displayed, is, quite obviously, that something changed and you started losing the auctions. A) Maybe the competition for the same target audience increased tremendously during those days - if there are 100 more advertisers that want to reach those people, it will naturally increase the minimum bid. B) or, the quality of your ad campaign decreased. One of the big factors of the ad quality score is the click-through rates - and I'm assuming it is the main reason your ads weren't showing up anymore.
Meet Facebook Ad Fatigue. The problem/challenge with Facebook ads is that they're very short-lived. Just by looking at the results that you shared, the campaign peaked on the 2nd day - and that happens for 90% of ad campaigns. If you're reaching the same small audience, which doesn't engage with your ad during the first few days, there are very high chances they won't engage with it at all. After a few days people get tired of ads, the click-through rates decline, your ad quality score declines accordingly, and you either stop winning the auctions or you need to increase the bids to keep them going.
I generally go with the oCPM bidding type and find it very effective. If the local audience is very small though, maybe you can try out CPM instead of CPC. However, the most important thing is to deal with the ad fatigue - by always rotating the ads, changing the visuals, the ad copy, even the campaign objectives - so that the audience doesn't get bored and continue to engage with the ads.
Hope that helps, and if you'd like to discuss it further, feel free to get in touch.
Cheers!
Adomas
