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Why Facebook Ads Suck

February 21, 2008 | Author: Travis | Filed under: Facebook

A few weeks ago my boss asked me to begin a Facebook PPC campaign.

For those who haven’t created a campaign here are the steps required:

Choose whether the ad will send users to
Select demographic. Select by Country, Age, Gender, Relationship Status, Interests, Workplace, University
Create ad
Select daily budget and enter payment information
Receive Clicks

Very straightforward, right?

Yes, but at the same time…

My Problems with Facebook Ads:

You can’t see the demographics of who clicked on your ad
Only one person can manage a campaign at a time
You can’t edit the ad once it is created
Navigation that makes you want to kick Zuckerburg in the face
You can’t delete your credit card number without adding another
All the text runs together in the ad/ you can’t cap all letters in the sentence
You can’t narrow down to a smaller audience by adding more targeting terms.

You Can’t See the Demographics of Who Clicked On Your Ad

Mark Zuckerberg has crippled the strongest feature that Facebook has to offer, the demographics of its users.

The intent of the ads is to keep Facebook users inside Facebook. The demographics are available, but only for Facebook Pages that you could presumably advertising for…

How it could be improved:

Being able to refine a search based upon what part of the target audience is clicking through like a perfectly logical feature. It doesn’t reveal any private information but would turn Facebook from a PPC-for-idiots to one of the most direct and powerful advertising tools available.

2. Only One Person Can Manage The Ad at a TimeThis cripples the entire possibility of people marketing themselves as “Facebook Ad Experts” by not allowing more than one person to access the credit card to run the campaign. Yes it is incredible easy to set up an ad, but what if you want to run 10 ads simultaneously and do a series of A-B splits?Suddenly Facebook requires a bit more work.

3. You Can’t Delete Your Credit Card Information

Unless you want to wipe all your information from the Facebook servers, it looks like Facebook will control your credit card information till you grow old and incontinent.

You Can’t Edit the Ad Once It is Created
Only a “similar ad”…I am not going to dignify this design flaw with a response.
Non-intuitive Design Suckage
You have to click multiple times before you are unable to edit your ad and see more detailed results. Why can’t we just have buttons leading directly to each page? There is enough room on the bottom of the menu…
Limitations on Ad Design
Yes, I can understand why Facebook wants to avoid linking to sites that open with popups or ads that have provocative images.But seriously, what is the difference between “I Love Hayden Panettiere” and “I love Hayden Panettiere”?This message:
Narrowing Down The Audience Suppose I want to target: However when I add another search definition I get this:
I want to target only those girls interested in both acting and dolphins! That demographic is much more likely to respond to my advertising, why do you insist on broadening my niche targeting abilities Facebook?

In conclusion:

Hayden, I think we would be good for each other. I save baby sea turtles, surf and can cook Indian food.

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