Developing eWrite

2 weeks ago I created an advert on Facebook for the Moviestar.ie Irish Web Awards 2008. The aim was to attract more people to the awards.ie site and to continue to learn about the advertising platform on Facebook.

The ad ran for 2 weeks from August 19^th til September 2^nd. The ad received 128,259 impressions and 87 clicks. When I set up the ad, I put aside 50 Euro ($73 US). The ad summary shows me that the total spent overall was €38.25 ($55.44 US).

The first 2 days of the ad saw it being clicked on 9 times a day, dropping off to average about 6 clicks for the rest of the 2 week period.

New ads seem to get plenty of clicks for lower impressions. Sundays also seem slow enough, higher impressions for lower clicks based on this ad and my first ad. I specified that I would pay $1 for a click, I wanted to spend a maximum for $5 a day to users 18 years and older in Ireland.

My initial ad for eWrite which spent a maximum of €10 a day seems to have received more than double the impressions, peaking at over 37,000 compared to over 14,000 for this ad. This Awards ad received more clicks which resulted in lower cost per clicks of $0.64 US compared to $1.82 US for the eWrite ad. Having a larger daily limit doesn’t necessarily result in more clicks.

Impressions in Blue. Clicks in Red.

The facebook ad manager summarises the daily stats by week. It would be handy if they could allow a summary for the entire length of the ad too. Had to patch it together myself. Here it is below:

It would be handy to know if any of the clicks resulted in nominations (now closed), sponsors or people subscribing to the awards.ie blog.

All in all, another useful experiment with facebook ad manager. So far it seems that a longer running ad, with a smaller daily budget works well. Some time in the near future I will be creating a new ad for eWrite on Facebook and tracking the clicks to see if users continue to use our demo of ewrite products or continue to buy from our online store that will soon be open to the public.

If you’ve found any of these Facebook Ad related posts of any use or tried anything like this yourself, please let me know!

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To help spread the word for the Moviestar.ie Irish Web Awards 2008, eWrite have put an ad on facebook to run for 14 days.

We’ve spent only a small amount on it, $73 (50 Euro). The ad will run from Tuesday August 19th to Monday September 1^st. The parameters for the Facebook ad are : $1 will be paid for every click and a maximum of $5 will be spent each day.

Hopefully this will bring some well deserved attention to the awards. Thank you to Damien Mulley for all the work he has put into this.  Check out the blog for day by day details.

Don’t forget to nominate your site, its free!

I placed an ad on facebook for 10 days to run from July 15^th to July25th. I specified that I would pay 1 Dollar for a Click and that the maximum I would pay per day would be 10 Dollars.

There were a few differences in the number of clicks when I compared Facebook ad details to Google analytics so I went investigating.

Unfortunately, I don’t have access to the logs from Blacknight to allow for a third source of data, logs are kept only for 5 days. If I advertise again on Facebook, Ill include my own scripts to log traffic data too.

A chart of the Ad clicks according to Facebook ad manager and Google Analytics.

According to Facebook Ad manager, the ad was clicked on 66 times. The ad ended on the 25^th but it tells me the ad was still clicked on on the 26^th which is nice.

The numbers in red show the days where Facebook ad manager and Google Analytics disagree about the number of clicks and visits. 8 of the overall 13 days for a 10 day ad campaign show different numbers

On the 15^th, my site was changing hosting over to Blacknight so that probably explains the difference of 3 visits that day. The site may not have loaded correctly for the user that day and so Google probably didn’t record the visits properly.

On the 26^th and 27^th, I don’t know why Facebook still had the ad going on the 26^th, I got charged for it which went over the free 100 dollars I gots from the VISA application and my credit card was charged accordingly.

Facebook charge of €13.21 on AIB 24 Hour banking

According to Google, I received 2 referrals from Facebook on 26^th and 27^th. Based on a comment from John O’Connor that never occurred to me, most likely the 2 referrals on the 27^th is a result of 4 visitors on the 26^th and they didn’t navigate away from the site or close the site until after midnight. Its a pity I cant see specific times on Google. Perhaps the exported reports from Facebook ad manager will tell me, but I can’t open it properly at the moment since the .xls file messes up when I open it in Open Office.

For the rest of the days, I can’t explain the differences between Facebook ad clicks and Google analytics visits.

In total, I was charged 120 Dollars for the ad campaign. I assumed (incorrectly?) that I would only be paying if the ad was clicked so according to the clicks shown above I should only have to pay 66 Dollars as it was 1 dollar per click.

I told the Ad manager I would like to spend no more than 10 Dollars per day so it seems I was charged the full 10 Dollars per day regardless of the number of Clicks.

Has anyone else advertised on Facebook? If you’re considering it, read Damien Mulleys tutorial on Advertising on Facebook and read Alexia Golez’s post about getting money for free to advertise.

On Tuesday July 15^th 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 13^th. 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 23^rd is 37,327 impressions.

The spike in impressions and resulting clicks on the 23^rd 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