Does Facebook advertising "work"?

[Ankesh]

Thanks Marshall.

There is an advertising saying that goes something like: Do you want to persuade 100% of the people 10% of the way? Or 10% of the people 100% of the way?

Optimizing your radio ad spend based on the number of people you can reach is just wasting your money. Because you need to reach people multiple times on radio - to have an impact and make them remember your brand when they require your services weeks down the line. You don't want to reach 100% of the people and persuade them just 10% of the way. Per person frequency is more important than population reach with radio advertising.

Anyways... Facebook is like radio advertising because:

i. People who listen to radio don't have that buying intent. They are not actually looking for any solution to a particular problem.

ii. You have to take a long term view with radio. You have to create a strategy based on your "product purchase cycle". Or you will fail.

But saying that - you are correct. Facebook is a new beast. Its similar to radio. But not same as radio.

i. On Facebook - you will have to change your creatives very often. Because stale creatives start receiving lower CTR. And Facebook stops running ads with low CTR. So its not like radio where you can keep on running the same ad and anchor your sales proposition / brand name in peoples minds.

ii. Facebook allows laser focusing. You can narrow down the demographics down to the city, age, marital status. You can focus based on interests. And if they like your competitors. No other ad medium allows such filtering of your audience base.

Everyone who has managed to make money with banner ads before has made money with Facebook ads. Treat facebook as a banner ad platform - with vastly better targeting - and you'll do fine.

Just don't give up on Facebook because GM gave up on it or because its stock price decreased. It can work in getting you some decent traffic often times at a lower cost than Google adwords.