Click Fraud Blog
Click Quality And Facebook Social Ads
May 20th, 2008
I have been doing a lot of work with Facebook social ads recently, and thought it would be a good time to write about the click quality issues I see with their program.
Why Use Social Network Ads?
As the strangle hold on Internet traffic by Google increases and the Yahoo/Microsoft partnership rumbles on and on, there is very little leverage an advertiser can bring to bear on Google in an effort to improve their advertising deal. There is an emerging option in the Social networks, in particular the ones developing their own pay per click advertising rather than partnering with the big search engines (Bebo/Yahoo, MySpace/Google).
What Are Facebook Social Ads?
Facebook has created it’s own advertising scheme where CPC or CPM ads can be displayed on the bottom left hand side of a Facebook user’s profile and example is shown below. In this case the ad is for Hilton Hotels.
The system allows a small text only or image and text ad to be created. This can then be linked to a site external to Facebook or to a page create on the site to advertise goods or services.
Due to the nature of the site and the information you supply, there is a lot of demographic targeting available for advertisers. Your ad can be targeted to location, sex, keywords (pre-defined in Facebook), age and educational status.
Facebook actions Social Actions are the novel part of this service. You ad can be displayed next to the normal social actions of Facebooks users. For example my friend Joe Bloggs buys tickets for the band The Click Quality Consultants (they are an indie guitar band - very cool). If this band were running a Facebook ad with social actions enabled, the ad would be displayed next to my friends updates, possibly making me click on their ad to buy tickets too.
The system uses a costing model similar to Google. You set a max cost per click for your ad, then a bidding system kicks in and if your max CPC is higher than your rival, your ad is dispalyed. You cost per click is also automatically reduced to 1 cent above your competitor in line with the Google model.
With an auidience of 70 million users growing by an estimated 250k per day, this is not a Google size or even Yahoo sized audience, but it has an engaged focused group of users which, when targeted correctly can provide decent returns for advertiers.
The Problems/Benefits As I see Them.
- My main concern is with the pricing of ads. In a Google or Yahoo campaign, I can see who I am competing with. With a Facebook ad, you must take it on on (forgive the pun) face value. Since there are no metrics to analyse, how do I know that Facebook is not artificially inflating the prices?
- All clicks have their referrer marked as Facebook, so it is difficult to find out which clicks are organic Facebook activity and which are paid for. This makes analysis of the traffic difficult.
- There is no way to create an exclusion list. If a Facebook users was maliciously clicking on your ads, you must manually contact the Ad support team for an investigation.
- Analysis of the conversion rate, depth, length and bounce rate of Facebook clicks found that this was comparable on the site I was working with to organic traffic, so I can conclude in this instance that the click quality from Facebook was as good as organic Google traffic.
- Text ads do not work on Facebook. As can been seen from the image above, a Facebook profile is very busy. A split test of text only versus image and text showed a 230%+ difference in click through. You need a compelling image ad for Facebook ad sucess.
- The system is not as mature as the search engines programs, this leads me to think that their click fraud filters will not be as advanced, therefore click fraud will slip through unnoticed.
- There is no content network of advertisers taking a cut for clicks, so publisher click fraud is not an issue.
- Excellent demographics. If you have a product which matches the audience it is a brilliant way to advertise.
Further Information
I am talking about this subject in much greater details at this months Webinar from the Click Quality Coucil, check out their website for details on how to join this event.
Other posts you may like
Tags: social network click quality
Posted in
Features |
June 10th, 2008 at 7:36 am
I’m in the middle of some issues with facebook’s ad system, which is how I found your post to begin with. I’ve been doing research to see if anyone’s run into the same issues I have.
First of all, I should say that not only does my Google Analytics account show obvious evidence of click fraud, but there’s a scarier issue at hand here. Facebook claims, and has charged me for, 800+ clicks on given days where my Google Analytics (and a second third-party tracker) reveals only 250-300 clicks via Facebook on those days. This is a huge discrepancy and amounts to hundreds of dollars on each given day where this occurred.
To make matters worse, Facebook has no customer support line for its advertisers. I was simply led to a generic “contact us” form, only to go well over a day before hearing back from a support rep who only shared his first name and had no specific address to respond to. The issue has dragged out for over five days now, and if I’m lucky, I’ll hear back from this rep once every two days with responses that do nothing to help to resolve what appears to be an obvious issue of click fraud, and very quite possibly inaccurate and flawed tracking with respect to their quantity of clicks. I sent them official Google Analytics reports to confirm the discrepancies, as well as the report from another third party tracker, only to be told that their engineers looked into the issue for me and that all was confirmed as accurate on their end.
This is a huge problem and one that will hold Facebook back from establishing itself as a legitimate online advertising force. I have no access to any data via Facebook that supports their claim, so I’m essentially in the dark and going on a generic email response I received from a customer service rep with Facebook. No offer to discuss further, no phone number, no nothing. As someone who’s spent hundreds of dollars per day on their ads, the least I’m owed is some better customer service and the willingness to resolve what’s very obviously an issue of inaccurate tracking.
It’s a shame because their demographic is ideal for my service.
Thanks for the post and I’m glad to see that someone out there sees things for what they potentially are. Here’s some living proof that you’re onto something.
Jesse
June 21st, 2008 at 11:40 am
I have to say that facebook ads do work but I have also come up against their dodgy delivery system. Amazingly I managed to come out on top after their system delivered me hundreds of clicks after I requested to pause the ad . Obviously I was having kittens for the duration as I didnt want to pay for this over delivery but they still think to this day that they didnt send the clicks. So I didnt have to pay for them (rare situation or what!), but my stats showed clear as day that I had plenty of clicks. Their ad serving is still open to serious problems and for this reason my daily budget stays low in case I cant pause them :(.
Good post I have to agree with your points regarding more transparency, a way to see more of where the clicks are coming from would be great. If you can target a demographic, why cant they deliver this info to advertisers or at least summarise so we can refine our ads to responsive groups like you do with negative keywords?
January 6th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
I am having similar problems with what I consider to be click fraud. Google Analytics tells me that I am receiving around 30% less clicks and those that are coming my way are bouncing at a much higher rate than other traffic - referred and organic. The conversion rate is also much lower - around 1/2 that of organic traffic, so I think it is pretty clear that it is not legitimate traffic. I have yet to contact Facebook - I cannot even find their contact form on their site yet - but will post Facebook’s response.
February 21st, 2009 at 11:39 pm
For those of you who are running deliberately fraudulent ads, such as “make money typing for Google”, you are in fact being targeted by Facebook users. There is a network of us who are deliberately clicking on these ads repeatedly to drive up the fraud artists’ costs, thus hopefully putting these criminals out of business.
March 24th, 2009 at 1:28 am
Same issue here, just today, charged me for, 800+ clicks but my 2 site trackers reveals only 500 visits.
I am going to contact them for an explanation otherwise I will contact my credit card company.
April 13th, 2009 at 9:49 pm
I have reached this page for exact same reasons. I noticed that Google Analytic shows about 30% less visits that Facebook shows(and charges clicks). I also noticed that i still get visits from Facebook although my ads have been switched off. But the reason why i started testing it was that i had very similar problems with MySpace but they charged me TWICE as many clicks than tracking showed visits(i tried 3 different campaigns). MySpace so far has only responded that they can not comment on 3rd party tracking software. Would be interesting to hear what was the outcome your dispute Jesse?
April 28th, 2009 at 3:08 am
I have been experimenting with FC ads 3 times now, and for certain Statcounter shows that I was billed TWICE for every incoming click from falsebook on my last campaign.
Just set up a new site, with google analytics AND statcounter, the site is getting zero organic traffic, and FB tells me 5 people clicked in, YET I have had zero visitors still…
So either google and statcounter are junk, or… my guess is that Facebook is running a scam, and maybe Ralph Nader should get his Consumer Reports to look into it.
June 22nd, 2009 at 4:33 pm
As an attorney who has been involved on behalf of advertisers in click fraud type cases, this is very troubling and certainly worthy of further investigation.
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:16 pm
I noticed Facebook was scamming me with fraudulent clicks. Google analytics showed my visits were mostly under 1 second and even those poor quality clicks outnumbered what I was billed for. Then today I noticed this message on my ad page:
“Recently, we have detected an increase in invalid clicks on Facebook. Your account was impacted and as a result, we are crediting your account.”
I received $1.64 in ad credits -about 1% of my small campaign. I’ll never trust facebook again.
March 7th, 2010 at 10:34 pm
The same happens to me! my fb ads management says that i’ve 90 clicks on my site but google analytics says only 48 from fb!! there is something that we can do to stop this?? such a mail address to report this disaster?? any help is appreciated!!
thanks
April 11th, 2010 at 3:48 am
Facebook COULD be so useful given how we can identify people that would be interested in our products based on some of their profile info. HOWEVER, as near as I can tell, it’s a total scam rooted within Facebook.
I set up a special landing page for a product and created an ad. It is a legit product. Within minutes my account quota was used up with 25 clicks. However, I checked my server logs and show NO VISITS from any Facebook visitors except some from organic listing much earlier in the day (before the landing page or ad existed)! It was a complete waste of money. I can’t see how they will continue to make any money from legit advertisers if/when those advertisers astutely become aware their advertising dollars are better spent elsewhere.
Like I said at the beginning, it’s a shame, because FB could have had a good thing, advertisers would too, and FB users would have ads targeted to their preferences and, since ads were making money, could keep free FB accounts. As it is, the whole thing is doomed for failure eventually — or FB will just start charging and make money that way.
July 2nd, 2010 at 11:49 am
I have tracked Facebook clicks on numerous occassions using various software and each time there is a difference of between 21% and 58% on received clicks and billed clicks.
Facebook at defrauding people here either directly or by negligence.
And here is the cast iron proof of why they are defrauding people. Most of the fraudulent activity I have tracked comes from their ‘Apps’ section. So I have asked can I stop my ads showing on any ‘Apps’ pages.
No we dont allow that.
You dont allow that because you are ripping off your customers.
Just a matter of time before this blows up in their face.
July 27th, 2010 at 9:51 am
i have just started running adds on facebook. and their clicks is twice what google analytics says i got . plus they actually went over my daily limit . i sent an e-mail to no response. if i can not get good answers in the next 24 hours i am shutting it down. i run a start up ligitimate business and can not afford to pay for air. Not only that i also contribute to a magazine and i will write about it until the cows come home. This is clearly fraud on the part of Facebook. If i get a response i will let you know
September 11th, 2010 at 12:45 am
I just finished spending $176 to generate 149 clicks on my ad. Facebook wanted me to keep going but I first wanted to look at my results…and the results were NO sales. I’m now wondering if these clicks were fraudulent.
October 18th, 2010 at 6:17 pm
I ran more than a thousand dollars in ads for a political campaign and I’m convinced that Facebook ads are a scam. Supposedly 500 people clicked on our “donation” links, but of those, not a single one actually made a donation (except me, when I tested the system to make sure we were logging donations accurately). That 500 people would click a button to go to a donation page in a highly visible statewide election but not a single one would actually follow through to donate is EXTREMELY suspicious!
May 23rd, 2011 at 11:23 am
I have the same Issue, Facebook charged me up to now over 300 € and the clicks to not correspond with google analytics. So its fraud BIG TIME.
Probably a script which goes through every month and creates these random fake clicks.
The other thing is, I am from a small Island with 4 major cities one being the large capital City.
If I check the demographic click report in Facebook I can see the same pattern of clicks from these 4 locations. Over a test period of 4 month.
It is very suspicious that all these cities have a percentage of clicks every month and every time they within the same percentage for example the capital city has always around 58% to 64% impressions and clicks, always in the same range for four consecutive months.
The same is with the other 3 locations where as here the percentage is in a lower range given the smaller size of this cities.
How can this be so balanced?
If I check my google analytics account for the last 3 years I never had so balanced visitors all over the island.
I stopped my add and set it down to 0.01 €/click just in case they keep charging me.
They do show the add on their pages, also to the right groups you specified. As I had some friends telling me that they saw my add while surfing the facebook. The Issue is that they charge you for clicks which are not real….