Ewrites first ad on facebook, 10 days with 100 dollars
On Tuesday July 15th I created my first ad for eWrite Lite on Facebook. I started this after reading Damien Mulleys post ‘Facebook Ad Competition - Best Irish Facebook Ad Campaign‘ and decided I’d give it a go.
Paying for it popped to mind, that was sorted quickly enough by adding the VISA Business network Application. Thanks to a link from Damiens blog to Alexia’s blog describing how to get 100 Dollars free to advertise in Facebook.
I logged into Facebook and added the VISA application on the 13th. The next day I received a nice email from Facbook Ads Team telling me I have received a coupon code and directed me to enter this into the Billing section of the Ads Manager.
I went through the steps of creating an ad for eWrite Lite. Damien also had this covered with a ‘How to advertise on Facebook‘ guide.
I specified that I would pay 1 dollar for a click, I wanted to spend a maximum for 10 dollars a day and run the ad for 10 days to users 18 years and older in Ireland.
So heres the eWrite Lite advert I created:
This was actually my second attempt. I didn’t like my first one, so I created another, shorter and more to the point.
That day, I also moved my site over to Blacknight.ie hosting so I could use a Linux based server. Quite stupid timing on my part, many of the first clicks from the Facebook ad would probably have received a blank site. Didn’t last long though.
So enough background, heres the graph of clicks from Facebook to eWritelite.com over the 10 day period:
Visits to ewritelite.com according to Facebook ad manager
July 15th : 10 Clicks
July 16th : 9 Clicks
July 17th : 4 Clicks
July 18th : 6 Clicks
July 19th : 4 Clicks
July 20th : 3 Clicks
July 21st : 4 Clicks
July 22nd : 6 Clicks
July 23rd : 10 Clicks
July 24th : 3 Clicks
July 25th : 3 Clicks
Heres the graph of impressions for the same period. The peak on the 23rd is 37,327 impressions.
The spike in impressions and resulting clicks on the 23rd is most likey due to Facebooks new interface design opened to the public that week which now shows 2 ads on a page rather than 1.
Heres an image of Facebook.com referrals from Google analytics for the same period. They don’t quite match up wth the clicks that Facebook show to the site.
Visits to ewritelite.com according to Google Analytics
July 15th : 5 Visits
July 16th : 7 Visits
July 17th : 2 Visits
July 18th : 5 Visits
July 19th : 4 Visits
July 20th : 3 Visits
July 21st : 2 Visits
July 22nd : 3 Visits
July 23rd : 9 Visits
July 24th : 2 Visits
July 25th : 3 Visits
—
July 26th : 1 Visits
July 27th : 1 Visits
I don’t get the difference in the Clicks from Facebook and the visits recorded by Google. I certainly don’t get why there are visits to the site from facebook after the ad campaign finished. Not complaining though.
Facebook billing reports 10 dollars taken from my accound each day of the ad. Shouldn’t it only take 10 dollars if I’ve had 10 clicks that day? It also shows I have 20 Dollars left in my account a few days after the campaign ended.
Lessons learned
Don’t move the website to another server at the start of an ad campaign. 
As a result of all the clicks from the Facebook ad, I recevied no enquiries from interested people. This is a sharp reminder for me to really focus on the website content and get the eWrite Lite Demo back up and running for users to experience the content manager.
Advertising on Facebook works, just make sure there is something on the receiving end for visitors to consume or interact with.
Conclusions
I’m going to advertise on Facebook again as soon as I’ve made some improvements to ewritelite.com
Tags: advertising, ewrite, facebook, google analytics
July 28th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Good writing. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed my Google News Reader..
Matt Hanson
July 28th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
I’ll certainly try, and thanks for subbing to the RSS.
July 28th, 2008 at 5:12 pm
I think for your product and mine, advertising on facebook is not a good option. The target audience are not in a position to listen when on facebook for business applications. Linkedin would be a better option for example. You need to work out a conversion rate from a source in this case unfortunately 100 people is not a big enough sample to realize if it an effective advertising option for your product. I suspect no matter how much you improve your site, you will still get little or no conversions. More to the point not enough to make a good return on investment. You’d be better off spending on google adwords as its much more targeted.. The problem is its much more compeditive too.
August 1st, 2008 at 5:51 am
[...] Gordon shows how that Facebook advertising works. [...]
August 1st, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Gordon,
Thanks a mill for sharing that - great read.
I believe the reason for the difference between your Google Analytic & Facebook numbers is that Facebook records when the person clicks from their website through to yours. while Google analyics only records the visit on the person leaving the website AND closing the browser. Quite a lot of people do not close down their browser within the same day, creating your mismatch.
The reason Google Analytics does this is to ensure that they get the full information of what you accessed allocated to the visit in their stats.
Of course, happy to be corrected….!
August 1st, 2008 at 6:53 pm
Thanks John, enjoying this blogging thing, hopefully I can keep it going. (Suggestions welcome!)
I didn’t think about Google Analytics waiting til the browser was closed. Would it not wait until the visitor left the site? Same effect really anyway. It certainly could explain the couple of stragglers at the end of the period.
August 2nd, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Gordon - I am curious about the discrepancy between Analytics and Facebook billing. A couple of dollars here and there is not the issue, but out and out fraud, especially if the campaign was on a larger scale certainly would be. Have you checked your own server logs to see if you can corroborate either the Analytics or Facebook’s reports?
August 3rd, 2008 at 7:40 am
Gordon - thanks for the info. I think I will try it out for ourselves - afterall free advertising is not to be sniffed at. I’m curious about the billing side of things though - if the Facebook count of 62 clicks is correct why were you billed for $10 a day ? - surely it should have been $62 at $1 per click. Or is the $10 a day a minimum charge? You should also have $38 left in your account …. not $20.
I’d be interested if you have any luck in figuring it out …
August 5th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Marcus & Aedan,
I’ll be writing another post about this shortly after I look into a couple of items like the logs and the billing.
I’ve just noticed a charge on my Credit card from Facebook which I don’t understand. I spent a maximum of 100 dollars which I got from the VISA app so I shouldn’t be charged anything on my credit card to my knowledge.
August 6th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
[...] you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!I placed an ad on facebook for 10 days to run from July 15th to July25th. I specified that I would pay 1 Dollar for a Click and that the maximum I would pay per day would [...]
August 21st, 2008 at 7:00 am
I placed my first add for my website today I’ve gotten 20 hits in 10 hours and I wanted to spend . After reading a bit more into the billing I read this
“We limit the total amount you can spend every 24 hours. If you hit your daily spend limit and you successfully pay the balance, your daily spend limit will automatically be increased. We first increase your spend limit to $250, then to $350, then to $500, then to $750, and finally to a maximum of $1,000. Increases normally take place within 48 hours of the day you hit the limit. If you hit the maximum limit of $1,000 and wish to further increase your limit, you may contact us to request a manual increase.”
Maybe I’m missing somthing but that sounds like there saying there going to start taking $250
August 21st, 2008 at 8:39 am
That does sound like they’ll charge $250 and more. That can’t be right, it defeats the purpose of putting a limit on daily spending.
I have another ad on Facebook at the moment, only for 2 days so far, luckily its staying within its limits.
I’ll read more about this.
August 21st, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Thank you for your reply. last night I pulled of my add because I didn’t want to be charged the $250 and I was really close to my daily limit. I had to delete my account all together because when I tried to pull off just the add it said it could take 24 to 48 hours to take affect. What a bunch of BS! So now I just can’t use it at all because when I try to sign up or a new add with a bit more money to cover me daily hits it says my adds account had been deleted but I also can’t sign up for a new account. This is so much more trouble than it’s worth. I have now sent 5 e-mails and had no response at all!!
August 21st, 2008 at 4:38 pm
Hi Jonathan,
I’ve been reading through the Help section for the Facebook ad manager. They have a long list of questions and answers which apply here.
Q. What does my “Daily Budget” control?
A. The budget that you set is your daily budget. It represents the maximum amount that you are willing to spend for each day you are advertising. Our system will automatically stop showing your ad once your budget has been met for the day, and you will never accrue charges in excess of your budget each day.
Q. Will I ever be billed more than my maximum cost per click or maximum CPM?
A. No, you will never be billed more than your maximum cost per click or the maximum CPM that you have specified.
Q. Will I ever be billed more than my daily budget in a day?
A. The total billable value of clicks or impressions in a Facebook billable day will never exceed your daily budget.
It’s odd that you can’t sign up for a new account, maybe it takes a day or so to sort itself out? I’d consider trying it again in a day or so, placing your add and keeping a close eye on the stats provided by Facebook.
It might be also worthwhile to have an independent stats programme running on your site such as Google Analytics. If they were to send more clicks than you have paid and charge you for it you’d know pretty quickly. You’d have good grounds to contact Facebook or your bank to cause a fuss for them.
August 21st, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Thank you very much for your input and research. I’ve been using sitemeter for the last year to track my hits. It’s a great tool and its free. I’m going to try to reset up an add later on today.
Thank you again,
Jonathan
August 21st, 2008 at 4:58 pm
No problem. Keep me posted if you can.
September 2nd, 2008 at 4:09 pm
[...] initial ad for eWrite which spent a maximum of €10 a day seems to have received more than double the impressions, [...]
October 19th, 2008 at 11:03 pm
[...] sonething I completely forgot about, Damien Mulleys Facebook Ad thingy, I actually stumbled across Gordon Murray’s blog, he had also done some testing on Facebook. Luckily I did set aside a folder of assets, notes and [...]
October 31st, 2008 at 10:29 am
[...] Google Adwords Since reading some posts a few months back on Damien’s Blog and the eWrite blog about Facebook Ads, we have recently tried them out for PuddleDucks. We were lucky enough to get [...]