Facebook Marketing:How Facebook is Sabotaging their Own PPC
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Facebook Flyers. Not too long ago, these were the hot item for many marketers. Then they realized that Facebook is incredibly restrictive, and bans at a drop of a hat.
Now, in my initial test, here is a brief list of the ads I’ve had banned:
- Any herb you can name, and probably a dozen you can’t.
- Online Personal Trainers/Health Advisors
- Anti-Spyware Software(this was before they officially restrited freeware/shareware)
- Standard Free Video Console/IPod/Iphone Contests
- About a dozen different Scholarship offers
- Magazine Subscriptions
- Online Surveys
- “Power Hour” DVD
- Home Breathalyzer Test
- Anything you can think of Cell Phone related(I expected these bans)
HOWEVER, Recently, I heard that Facebook had become more lenient, and that they defined their advertising guidelines more. I decided to give it a try. After concluding this test, I can comfortably say: Facebook, I’ll see you in hell.
I saw that they had loosened up on their dating site restrictions, and decided to give it a run. I wanted to stay on the safe side, so I fired up the old CPA affiliate account, and picked a Christian Dating Program. That’s right. Christian dating. I targeted it as tight as I possibly could. I found a picture on Google images of a nice, conservative looking couple. I wrote my creative carefully, making sure to avoid sexual terms. I made 4 of these ads, with slight variation. They converted like crap. But that’s not the worst of it. I logged on about an hour ago, and was greeted by this.
Now, I’ll show you my Ad in a minute. But first, let me explain what those sections are. Also, concentrate specifically on 6. 4 and 5 are very debatably violations, but 6 is ridiculous. Beyond that, 6 was a given reason for denying all but 1 of my ads!
#4 is basically grammar, and avoiding unnecessary capitalization. This ad has a bit of unneccesary capitalization, but not terrible (the word YOU). The rest of them have no unnecesarry capitalization, but weren’t marked as such.
#5 is the use of numbers or symbols to change the word. Repeated and unneccesary punctuation or symbols is not permitted. I have no idea where they got this from. Number 6 is the kicker. This is the EXACT text, with important parts bolded for emphasis.
6.Language and image content
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Now, here was my ad:
Apparently the smiling couple, one with the arm around the other, makes the Facebook mods too hot and bothered to control where they’re clicking. The landing page for this (I’m prohibited from pasting a screenshot of it) has only a picture of a middle aged, fully clothed couple, the man with his arm around the woman.
The remaining Christian dating ads were eliminated for similar reasons, #6 being the only constant. There was one non-christian dating ad.
I had one more dating ad up(non-Christian) for SinglesNet. The landing page had one girl on it. No mention of sex. No mention of swinging. Nothing illicit. Now, this ad was banned for only 2 reasons. #6 (it used the same image, and almost the same creative as the Christian ad. Just substitute “single” or “people” for Christian). Now, before I give you the other reason this ad was banned, here was the only human, and the only text, on the landing page.
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| Click Either Image to Enlarge. And yes, it’s work safe! | |
Click either one of those images to enlarge them, and see that which facebook considers to offensive to the 18+ crowd that these were targeted to.
Now, for the magical reason that ad was banned.
“Adult friend finders or dating sites with a sexual emphasis”
That’s right. With no mention of swingers. Nothing relating to sex. Nothing mentioning one night stands, or even the attractiveness of the members!
Conclusion:
Facebook needs to lighten up, and think from the prospective of a marketer. The primary audience of Facebook is either High Schoolers with no credit card, or broke ass College students with no money. Now, they have an apparently problem with not only anything free(if it’s free, it’s banned for being a scam), and consider a cute blonde girl to sexual for one of the few remaining offers that could conceivably convert?
Look Facebook. I’ve had some offers that did ok with the Flyers program, for about 20 minutes . But with these constant bans, and the incredible restrictions, there’s absolutely no way to make this work. Although, I find it interesting that licensed pharmacies can advertise [I believe they’re] boner pills(I saw the ads), and yet my cute little smiling Christian girl is too raunchy for your PPC ads. I mean, come on. According to her religion, she/the boyfriend couldn’t even USE those pills! Really. You also have application where the icon is a pot leaf. There’s no high horse to be had here.
If any Facebook reps stumble upon this, I’d love to hear your input. I for the life of me can’t understand how there is any hope for this to become a profitable and useful program anytime in the near future unless some extreme changes are made. At least unless you want people to flagrantly disregard the rules for the sake of making a profit. Believe me. There’s much worse things than a free IPhone contests.
I want to make Facebook take some notice, and hopefully ammend their policies. Everyone, get a sphinn account(due to some obnoxious sphinn glitches, I’m unable to sphinn this myself), e-mail them, call them, do whatever you can. This is effin ridiculous. Let’s fix their PPC program for them 
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November 20th, 2007 at 11:23 pm
Facebook do search engine reputation management. Promote this and they’ll get back to you. But then, plenty of other people have had their stuff cancelled. So you can probably also try… taking a number.
http://seoroi.com/seo-roi-quality/facebook-practices-search-engine-reputation-management/
November 21st, 2007 at 1:27 am
Heh. I normally reject anything with a link drop in the content, but god damn if that wasn’t relevant.
And I know everyone else(literally) who uses flyers is having problems, but I’m hoping I properly highlighted just HOW ridiculous they’re being.
Time will tell, and I hope you’re right.
November 23rd, 2007 at 9:16 pm
Oh man — this happened to me just yesterday. I ran a campaign for the travel company I worked for, and within an hour it was banned…
Sure, I used the word TRAVEL in uppercase, fine. And it had a picture of a couple snorkeling (omg! their backs are showing!) So I tweaked it… they havent banned my new one yet.
… then again, overall, NO ONE has clicked on it once yet, and theres a few thousand page views. I’m really wondering the quality of these ads.
Glad I’m paying per click, versus impression.
November 24th, 2007 at 12:59 am
Ah, that’s rough davis. And once the CTR of the ad drops below .02, you’re boned; you’ll barely get any impressions.
November 24th, 2007 at 11:48 am
Hi, I totally agree with you. I have experienced this by myself.
My blog is talking about how to make money on facebook. Right now I am still preparing my series of posts about “How To make Money on Facebook” but I can tell you that in my first post I will advise everybody not to use facebook flyers, facebook marketplace, and facebook pages. for some reason everybody get banned after using these marketing tools.
Regarding how should you try to Get Facebook’s attention, I would say e-mail them… I have got my account reactivated couple days ago by e-mailing them. But in the other hand I think that whatever we say they won’t change anything about how they control their marketing tools… Do you know why?? they want to make money for their selves only and not to allow anybody else to make money by using their website unless you are a big company and you paying them millions.
Thanks,
Lara,
November 24th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
The best way I’ve seen to get in contact with them is to know someone who knows someone who works there…
November 24th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Hmm. I don’t know anyone, but I’m going to dig around. Thanks for the advice.
November 25th, 2007 at 7:56 am
[…] Facebook marketing: how is facebook sabotaging their own PPC, Slightlyshadyseo […]
November 25th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
Hey Shady,
Well, fyi, I linked to you from a Gooruze article on Facebook advertising without you even asking, and plus that sucker is dofollowed! And I didn’t even know at the time that you let that link get through.
Keep up the good work bro
Cheers
Gab
p.s. I don’t spend my time there anymore, but I recall people at wicked fire having trouble with facebook flyer campaigns. Might check there for more info.
November 25th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Thank you very much for the link! My goal is to somehow get this stuff to rank wayyy up on google for “facebook flyers”.
Also, not only do I remember the WickedFire thread, I was a pretty active part of it (the whole cloaking thing was my idea on there). But thanks anyways!
November 26th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
Hmmm…. , i was searching for online dating ads online dating ads and i came across your post and it is definitely the most sensible thing i have seen in a long time, and in my opinion you got something good going here, i have to get my friends to subscribe to your post ook Marketing:How Facebook is Sabotaging their Own PPC : Slightly Shady SEO .
(slightlyshadyseo note: I’m well ware this is a spam post, but it was so good, I let it through)
November 27th, 2007 at 12:25 am
Lol, love how you let the dude make a fool of his spammy self while not giving you the link. Lol, dumbass.
November 27th, 2007 at 12:26 am
(The spammer is a dumbass, I mean.)
My pleasure for the link, btw. Nice post.
You probably got something similar to this in your mail, btw:
http://sphinn.com/story/15833
Facebook Flyers to Die December 3 2007
November 27th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
I have had the same experience. They are wank. The moderators must spend all their time declining adverts, which then use up 3000 odd impressions with no clicks because you cannot do anything to your adverts that improve the dismal click through ratios.
Rejecting the adverts with explainions such as “terms 3,5,8″ etc, is ridiculous. I submitted an advert about 5 times before it was accepted.
Perhaps if they actually said “get rid of any capitalisation” etc. Or were more helpful. They would actually have less work to do!
Just don’t even bother with them!
December 7th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
Facebook were ruthless with banning people with Flyers Pro, so I’d expect the same treatment.
December 29th, 2007 at 5:31 am
Makes you wonder what the Facebook staff are busy with — they’re definitely not busying themselves with deleting all of the Facespam crap that’s clogging up the discussions on their networks, that’s for sure…
February 6th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
[…] Facebook test from a while back - similar results. There’s also shady who talks about how restrictive the ad process is. If you want to hear a real expert’s option, check out Danny […]
February 7th, 2008 at 11:31 pm
To make matters worse, look at the article linked to in my name. It shows that how while Facebook team is ultra restrictive with flyer advertisers, they allow the MSN ad network which has banner ads in rotation to advertise and target to whoever or whatever they damn please.
June 10th, 2008 at 8:41 am
my original experience with them was quite a bit more colorful.
Would love to learn more.
Gtalk with me using my email address above..thanks.
June 23rd, 2008 at 11:33 am
[…] great suggestion from Slightly Shady SEO has them asking Facebook to lighten up a […]