Facebook AffiliatePPC The Lazy Way

What up, my name is Alexander Tsatkin and this is a guest post on my call with a Facebook Account Manager.

Most Facebook publishers know how frustrating it is to have no support, getting ads denied with vague reasons, and overall lack of answers. After getting some BS internal error for over 72 hours I decided to contact my Affiliate Account Manager who was able to get me in touch with a Facebook rep.

I got a call at about 7:00 PM his time, which suprised me. I asked as many hard questions as I could, and here are the answers I got. Some of these will be obvious to people who have doing Facebook for a while, and for others it will helpfully save you the headaches the rest of us experienced.

Is Acai/Wu Yi Dead?

Yes, too many Facebook users were complaining about these “negative” charge diet offers, so Acai and Wu Yi ARE dead. The ads you keep seeing are legacy ads, so if you don’t have an acai ad, chances are you won’t get one through.

Are Ringtones Dead?

Yes… they have been dead for a while.

Are Quizes Dead?

Yes, Facebooks goal is to only allow quizes that do not require any personal information at the end… no credit, zip, or email.

How to get dating ads through?

Do not use the words single, reference the users age, reference to users location, or use provocative language. The ad is more important than the landing page in terms of skin being shown, but neither can be to too reveling. Mention the offer in the ad text itself. Do not make the condition of “being single” as being negative.

How to get health related ads through?

Do not use quantitative numbers that cannot be verified (loose 10 Lbs in 10 Days). Do not put down persons with a condition.

Here are some other nice tid bits I learned…

Their system does assumes your ad has a CTR of .07% when launching, so getting a higher CTR should be your goal. Your bidding does not effect what position you are in when three ads are being shown at the same time. They do not take into account time of day when launching, so the best way to split test is launch the same set of ads at different times of the day.

Here is the best thing I learned “intern.facebook.com” DOES NOT stand for “intern”… but instead stands for “internal”. So here we were bashing Facebook interns, when apparently its a separate team all together. No such thing as an intern nazi party?

If you are running Facebook and need someone to talk to to understand EXACTLY why your ads are not getting through then shoot me a note on my blog and I will hook you up.

Shameless Plug : Google Sucks

I’ve tossed up a Christmas theme as I’m a fairly festive person and I just wanted to say Merry Christmas to all of you. Christmas can be a troubling time for alot of people financially (Hell, I remember buying peoples presents at the dollar store a couple years in a row) and so I wanted to remind everyone that the profitable facebook campaign I posted a while back is still going strong on Maxbounty. Feel free to try it out if you have not yet!

Also, I don’t think I’ll have the opportunity to post much in the coming weeks due to the holiday season so here are a few blogs that I have frequented to keep you well read over the holidays!

1) Bryn.Me - Bryn odly enough lives only a couple of blocks away from me and does some good work with Facebook Social Ads. He’s been on ClickConsultants Radio Show a couple of times now answering questions for the curious.

2)Neilsweb.com - He touches on pretty much everything about affiliate marketing. I read his blog purely because he points people in the right direction as to what they should be reading. Look out for Zac’s advertising link on his page though - don’t get caught clicking through to the king of cluelessness.

3) Madppc.com - Brad likes to talk and I like to hear him ramble.

Lets face it, Facebook overprices their traffic. You can buy mega targeted traffic from Google for around $0.35 a click with minimal work, or you could pay Facebook $0.80 a click for someone who saw a pretty picture and decided to click on it.

So why do people still advertise on Facebook? The easy answer is that Facebook wants to grab as much money as possible from people, so they reward ads that have a high CTR with more impressions and lower CPCs. Facebook has a pretty simple (yet inconsistent) formula that calculates how much they will make from showing one ad instead of another. Therefore, if your ad has a CTR of 0.3% and a max CPC of $0.10, it would be in their best interest to show it over an ad that has a CTR of 0.05 with a max CPC of $0.35.

So how do you get a high CPC? There really is no finite answer unfortunately, however brushing up on your psychology and market research helps.

Tips for getting a high CTR:

1. Microtarget - Instead of targeting the entire United States, target specific States or even Cities. People from different regions like different things.
2. Relate - Make your ad feel like it’s specifically aimed at them. Including their interests, gender, anything you may know about your target audience WILL help.
3. Image Selection - Choose an image that is relevant and eye catching. Read up on your psychology of colors. Here is a great thread from Wickedfire on the matter.
4. One Ad Per Audience - A lot of people may dispute me on this, however in my testings I have observed that a high CTR is achieved if you only have ONE ad running for each audience. For example, you should only have one ad targeting males and another targeting females.