Experiment Part 3: El Fin

In case you somehow missed it, I ran an experiment this past week on Facebook.  It stemmed from wanting to play with the new controls you had over targeting flyers.  They now let you get very specific, right down to targeting people that mention certain things on their profiles.  I took that idea, and applied it to writing up an ad to offer a dinner date to someone.  Let's take a look at the numbers.

I had a click through rate of 1.073%, which I think is like half as good as what others reported as average, if I recall.  It is actually a bit higher than I was expecting given the nature of the flyer.  This translated into about 2.05% of the total population targeted.  Looking at it as being that 2% of girls were willing to click on a flyer on Facebook for a dinner date it is quite amusing as this is the same percentage of girls that say grabbing their breasts is an ok way to say hello.  I wonder if there's a correlation. 

My total impressions were about twice what my total population was.  Given that there is probably some amount of people that were in my population but didn't even log in this last week, I'd guess that anyone that saw it did so at least twice. 

The clicks were fairly well distributed throughout the period the flyer ran.  I didn't receive a ton at first then nothing, they came at a pretty even rate.  I thought that was rather interesting.

My final average cost per click was 64% of my max CPC.  The total amount that I spent was only 8% of what my maximum cost could have been.  All in all, this was a cheap experiment.

So, after all of this, did I get anyone that actually responded?  Nope.  Not a one.  While I did have people that actually clicked through, no one felt like responding to the ad.  When I told my friend the results she commented that it was rather sad.  I asked for me or the people that clicked through, to which she said, "Both."  I guess that pretty much sums up the whole experiment, though: sad.

As a final note, I don't actually see any ads, so I don't know if these types of flyers are commonplace or not.  In the past, you could target your flyers to a specific network, so if someone were to put something like this up, everyone would see it.  Now, though, since you can be so specific, I would think that your money could be used much more efficiently.  By targeting a very specific set of people, you would cut out anyone clicking on the ad that doesn't meet your target audience. So, has anyone seen an ad of this type before?  Do you think you might start seeing them now?

Experiment Part 2

I started an experiment on Monday to test out Facebook's new flyer targeting tools, and as just a social experiment.  It entailed making a flyer offering a date that was targeted to a specific set of girls in my area.  It's been running since Monday night, and will be up until next Monday.  Here are the results of it so far.

I've had a .96% click through rate so far.  This is about what I was expecting, if not higher.  I've seen a ton of stuff about how bad the click through rates on flyers are, and coupled with the topic of this flyer I didn't expect many takers.  I have yet to receive any responses, though, so the clicks I've received are probably just the curious. 

I know that each impression is not a unique individual, but the total impressions I've received so far equal about 85% of the total population.  Watching theses impressions increases has given some insight to when people get on Facebook.  For example, during the day time, the impressions increases fairly slowly.  However, once night comes, they rack up quite quickly.  This is to be expected, as most people are probably logging on and spending time on the site at night.  This seems to be later in the night, too, such as after 8.  Another interesting thing is the rate at which the impressions have increased.  At the beginning of the campaign, the impressions racked up rather quickly.  Now they seem to be increasing more slowly.  I'm not sure if this is related to how Facebook displays them, or if it is based on usage habits of my target audience.  What is interesting is that this mirrors what I've seen happen on Google ads I've run (those weren't for dates, just FYI).  In the beginning, they got a ton of views.  Then, as time progressed, they tapered off.

I'm paying based on how many clicks I receive, and the rate I pay is determined by the system based on how much they used to "bid" for my placement.  I set a maximum per click, and a maximum per day limit.  So far, the most I've paid for a click is 72% of what my maximum is.  Also, the average of what I'm paying is 60% of my max.

I'll probably have an update this weekend on how things are going.  I still am not expecting to actually hear anything, but I'm a bit surprised at how many clicks I've received, so who knows.

Experiment Part 1

I was talking to a friend of mine about Facebook’s new flyer advertising options when an idea for an experiment came up.  To give a quick overview, you can now get very granular with in your selection of who sees your flyer. In the past, it was based solely on which network would see it.  Now you can target based on any number of criteria.  What is interesting is that it gives you a real time number of how many people your ad will be hitting.  This can provide for some fun time killing (just how many men between the age of 18 and 29 like The Notebook), or for some legit marketing information. For fun, I can choose to target only single females in my city that like Family Guy.  Pulling that info up is when the idea came.  What if I tried making a flyer for an ad to get a date?  Facebook’s flyers are known to have abysmal click-through rates, so odds would be against me before even beginning.  Second, lets be honest, how likely is someone to actually click on and respond to an ad for a date on there?  To be honest, my hypothesis is that I won’t get any responses from this, but I figure this gives me something to write about for the next couple days. 

I’ll be running the ad for a week using competitive rates for maximum visibility.  It will give a quick blurb saying that I’m looking for someone to take to dinner, and have a link to a page with who I am and contact info.  I’ll post an update to how it’s going later in the week, and will have final results at the end.  Like I said, I’ll be surprised if anyone responds, but who knows I might meet some new people.