I work at Facebook on the mobile app ads team.<p>Like a lot of other commenters here, I think the OP didn't run an mobile app install ad which is meant exactly for this scenario - which would show up only on mobile inside newsfeed.<p>OP - would love to help out and dig in further. Can you email me (I'm sriramk@fb.com)?
I'm not sure what makes the OP think that you can run a conclusive experiment with a $20 ad budget… you're not going to get any conclusive numbers out of that. With click-through-rate and install-rate both typically in the low single digits, you're likely to get, if you're lucky, a handful of install for a thousand impression. In order to have a sample size big enough to make conclusive statements like this, you'd need at least 500 installs - ie. an ad budget of $1,000 for each network.<p>Disclaimer: I work at Chartboost, now the largest mobile gaming ad network.
Why did you buy desktop ads to try to get mobile installs? Of course you're going to get a ton of impressions and hardly any actual installs: no one browses Facebook's desktop site via their android phone, and people on desktop aren't looking to install an app.<p>Also, your Google ad is significantly better looking than your Facebook ad, and is also much more likely to be seen while people are on their mobile phones.
It's hard to tell from the included screenshots, but both based on the dimensions of the Facebook Ad (it looks like a "Right Hand Rail" ad and not one that run in the newsfeed) and the fact that a Mobile App Install statistic was not provided, I think its fairly likely that the Facebook Ad in question might not have been the Mobile App Install [1] format. That type of ad can be targeted only to people who are consuming Facebook via the Facebook client for your desired Mobile OS (in this case Android) and the call to action will be direct install. It will also indicate precisely how many install occurred via the Mobile App Install conversion stat. The add in question would have been a link to the play store via the web -- even if the user is not on a mobile device.<p>If I am correct (I can't be sure given the article), the results are not surprising. A properly run Mobile App Install Campaign can yield sub $2 installs depending on the app being advertised, but that assumes requires some experience running online ad campaigns.<p>[1] <a href="https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/ads-api/mobile-app-ads/" rel="nofollow">https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/ads-api/mobil...</a>
This just seems silly. The Facebook ad pointed at the game webpage while the AdMob ad pointed to the appstore.<p>Obviously ads that point to the appstore are going to convert at a higher rate.
From experience spending extremely large amounts of money: If done right Facebook will win every time. Use targeted mobile app install campaigns, Facebook's bread-and-butter.<p>Your main problem is going to be that the game is sci-fi themed. They are very hard to marketing. If any perspective developers are reading this, don't make sci-fi themed mobile games.
Because Facebook doesn't let you get the install referrer, their mobile app install ads are nearly useless to me.<p>There is no way to correlate a user who installed via FB with your revenue, if you have In App Purchases.
I'm not surprised that facebook ad is a complete waste of money. First, lots of people block ads in facebook newsfeed. Second, who would click on ad of a game when people are busy posting baby's pictures?
I would re-run your test with the following:<p>1: a better mobile specific Facebook ad
2: the same admob ad
3: a budget of $350 each to be spent over 7 days<p>That will provide a much more conclusive test.
tl;dr: Comparing conversion rates (a metric which is usually in range of 1-3%) using a sample size of n = 60 clicks, by just looking at the total number of registered users.<p>Even if you had amazingly high conversion rates, with sample of that size, the total number of conversions could be just about anything. Simple variance.<p>Well done on releasing the game with good reviews though. That's a great achievement. Just spend a bit of time just thinking about advertising :)
There was no conversion tracking for the Facebook ads? If I ran this campaign I would be mainly interested in how much each conversion is worth to me and what each one cost.