Facebook Ads: How to Get 1 Cent CPC (and why you might not want to)

this whole article is practically useless without data on how the incoming traffic ultimately converted on momentgarden.com. (how many sales did you generate from picture B over picture D?) just like eve online's a/b testing that led to using pictures of attractive, loosely clothed women indicates you can always increase click through rates by getting closer to porn. what good are CTRs when your traffic is more interested in the picture they clicked than the product you're selling?

I run Facebook ads all day at my job and you're definitely going to have to pay much more for ads in U.S. (over Canada or anywhere else). In addition, starting your ads at a lower CPC will get you a lower quality score for your ad -- so even if you get served initially, the life-span of your ad getting served on Facebook will be much less. You will then have to reupload and start spending at a higher CPC much quicker. Of course if you're a small business, starting out at a much higher CPC (&#62;$1) and running a lot of initial volume might not be feasible for most people. You need to start out with greater than .100% CTR if you want to have the ad sustain for a long period of time. Running celebrity ads for a short period of time will work, but you could be looking at C&#38;D at some point if you're running a huge amount of volume.<p>Edit: At the end of the day CPC and CTR are useless if you can't drive enough volume from the ads based on your targeting.<p>Edit 2: Targeting 30+ women will get you a higher landing page conversion and CTR (obviously depends on the vertical, but in general).

"And by cowbell, I mean clickable-ness. Examining the results of our first round, and our research of what makes a photo clickable, we experimented with a new version. This one took our best performing ad (Ad B) from round 1, and zoomed in further to put more focus on the baby and the, ahem, clickable-ness."<p>Best part. Great article, much appreciated. Reminded me of the infamous "gray shirted girl": <a href="http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2011/04/why-does-facebo.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2011/04/why-does-face...</a>

High clicks alone, even if they don't turn into customers, are worth something in that you can bid less for advertising. Depending on the numbers, it may be worth styling the ad and targeting the ad partly to include those high clicks even if they aren't turning into customers. You'd still get to bid less than if you just targeted for whoever is most likely to become customers. You'd have to crunch the numbers to see if it is worth it, however.

Really good post. Keyword/interest targeting on Facebook is a gold mine that is completely ignored by 99% of advertisers.<p>Facebook Ads reminds me a lot of the early days of AdWords. Whoever was first to bid on long tail keywords must have made a killing. You can be that person in 2011 bidding on long tail keywords on social ads.

I had no idea that you could view demographic info of people that clicked your ads. In fact, I was about to request it as a feature. Even after I read this, it took me 5 minutes to figure out how to get there. Makes me wonder if they buried it on purpose, or if it's another example of very poor FB UI.

Great article, but I think your marketing message needs to be adjusted for conversion a little, which will backward-waterfall into CTR and CPC. Your ad is missing your value prop, it does not communicate what it will do that FB does not do already. Secondly, since you're already talking to moms, so why show moms more moms? If your message is privacy or continuity or whatever, why not show an ad with someone that fits your physical bill having the problem that you're trying to solve so you attract customers (who are having the problem you're trying to solve).<p>BTW, the photos with high CTRs you describe will alienate family oriented people - that is why very few businesses go there.

&#62; That way it can milk higher CTR from ads with CPC bids by putting them at the top of the same page, and still get just as much money from your CPM bid at the same time. That’s my theory, at least. Sneaky.<p>It's just the result of their auction, not intentionally sneaky. Ideally when you choose CPM, you'd be allowed to specify different bids for different positions, or at least be randomly inserted into the list since there's no way for CPM bidders to specify their value for each position.

While most of the points made are valid, the main reason they likely got cheap CPC was targeting countries where there's little competition.

Before you decide to copy these tactics, you might want to read up on the law regarding using the name or likeness of another without their permission (i.e., grabbing celebrity photos off the internet for your ad).<p><a href="http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/using-name-or-likeness-another" rel="nofollow">http://www.citmedialaw.org/legal-guide/using-name-or-likenes...</a>

so for 1 cent you can get few clicks from Egypt and Pakistan.<p>nice.<p>you are just 2 steps away from becoming next internet {b/m}illioner. if only you can:<p>1) attract millions them @ 1 cent price. screenshots shows just few clicks at that price<p>2.1) find advertisers willing to pay &#62;$10 cpm for these visitors<p>or<p>2.2) make them spend &#62;1 cent on average.