Have you ever run an advertising campaign on Facebook?

[MichaelCorfman]

Earlier this month we devoted our weekly poll to asking members whether they had any Facebook fan pages, and if so, how many (see the poll How many Facebook fan pages do you have?). As of today about 85% of the folks voting in that poll say they have a Facebook fan page.

The obvious next question is how do you promote that fan page. There are lots of ways to do that, including promoting it from your regular website and promoting it from within Facebook. Facebook makes is pretty easy, and not too expensive to promote fan pages. As a test, yesterday I started a small campaign for the GPWA fan page. So far it has cost less than $10 to deliver over 18,000 stories to friends of GPWA members that like the GPWA on Facebook, and for 31 of those friends to like the GPWA fan page on Facebook. Not bad since I have a coupon for $50 in free Facebook advertising.

So I'm curious, how many folks have experimented with ads on Facebook? If you have, do you think it is worthwhile? If you have not, do you plan to try it sometime?

Michael

[Doolally]

I've just started my Facebook Fan page so haven't advertised it at all yet outwith my friends list. Something I'll probably look at in the coming months though.

[baldidiot]

Interesting. Are there any kind of restrictions on the type of advertising you can do? Primarily in reference to our industry, of course.

[casinoplanet]

I promote two fanpages and one of my websites on Facebook, but I find them quite expensive (0.50 cpc at least).

There are no real restrictions for igaming, so that's a good thing though.

[foxtucker]

It would take a lot to convince me of the benefits after reading the results of an experiment that the BBC ran back in July of this year. Specifically they found themselves paying for a large number of fake likes.

bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18822971

[F-L-C]

I had the worst opinion about FB advertising but then I have been hearing a lot of stories about great results lately so I wasn't sure how to vote here, the 2nd or 3rd option... I think I will have to keep an eye on this thread

[G_F_Brown]

I have a number of FB fan pages, running with varying degrees of success in terms of 'likes'. I'm yet to dip my toes in to FB ad's and I've received very mixed reviews as to their success.

For me personally I don't see the benefit of advertising my fan pages but the sites I manage could potentially get some good traffic.

[slotplayer]

I advertised my retail site. I think it was a waste of money. Got some likes though.
I'm somewhat surprised though as it was perfect for my retail site and you can really narrow down the demographics.

Everytime I log into facebook it always goes to the campaign page. Drives me nuts.

I spent a good amount of time creating facebook business pages and a month or two later they changed to that awful timeline format.


did I tell you how much I absolutely hate facebook?

Speaking of ppc, Google is requiring those with feeds in Google Shopping to run Adwords ads or you could be booted out.

[lowrisk]

I am confident that Clicks arent real, loads of people seem to think the same too

[Marit VS]

We've run a few facebook campaigns to promote our page - and I have to say, impressed by the result. As long as your targeting is relevant (so you don't go 'everyone in the UK'), we've had some ok results. The trick for me is to promote the posts themselves rather than a generic page - so its all about engagement rather than 'likes' (although those come along by default)

But it's still early days. Will let you know when (if?) I hit a 'wall'.

[Doolally]

I notice now when you make a post it asks if you want to promote it.

I posted a general link yesterday and it was wanting to charge me £6.05 a click to promote it!!

[Marit VS]

Just found this article on facebook (ironic), which might deserve a thread of its own!

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/f...y_friends_back

Basically it's now saying that in order to reach 80% of your 'fans' on facebook you either have to advertise or only reach, at best, 15% of your audience. Now I've been advertising in order to grow my relatively small fanbase - so my costs are low. But pay in order to keep my free fans onboard? I'm starting to doubt the amount of time I am spending building up my page!

This seems crazy to me.

[TravG]

I am surprised there are not restrictions. I have thought about doing this just to try to get a few likes. FB is having trouble monitizing the site and so many people use mobile to view FB, even they have said it is a struggle they are facing as well as google. I cant see it really being a revenue driver, but for SEO purposes and getting a lot of "likes" it may be worth a few dollars. I may give it a shot especiallyy if could find that $50 coupon!

[Anthony]

I think is is more challenging to find value when you are targeting a particular niche. I am skeptical of the quality you're getting from facebook.

[justbookies]

I don't know what the situation is now with facebook restrictions for our industry. I ran some ads - got some likes but did not make any money from it and then they disapproved all my ads on the basis they restricted gambling advertising. My site is 100% white list operators so it wasn't an issue of promoting the wrong firms. That was maybe a year ago. My understanding then was facebook was allowing gambling ads if you spent $30k a month and banned all others (if they actually bothered as my ads ran for long time before they cottoned on and stopped them). They messaged me stating my facebook page would be removed if I did any more ads. This thread seems to suggest their actual policy does now allow small time advertising of betting related facebook pages (officially that is rather than unofficially)? Can anyone clarify this for sure?
Though to be honest, I am not too bothered as it did not work for me except to get some likes (half of which I had to remove anyway to rename the page!).

[Renee]

Well I found a way to get free advertising on fb

If you start the advertisement process, then cancel just before you are ready to pay, you should get an email within a few days saying "we are sorry you cancelled, here try it for free"

Not sure it works for everyone but it has worked for me twice.

Cheers

[Maria F]

I voted the second option. I do post on facebooks about our brands, but I think there are better ways to promote them like good player promotions and affiliate incentives.

[Madabout Media]

Hi All,
we have had murder with Facebook recently. we used to have no problem getting our adverts and promoted posts approved by FB, However recently we had one of our fanpages removed and we cant seem to get any of our adverts approved.

they removed one of our fanpages for a slot site with over 2500 followers, i have been working on without any notice and said we where breaching t&c's, which we werent. So i emailed them back asking to explain which t&c's we have supposedly violated and what we could do to get out fanpage reinstated. They then contacted us explaining that with i been a gambling related fanpage we would have to have it managed by facebook at a minimum cost of £10k a month!!!

i have emailed every single email and customer support team i can find on facebook regarding this but i have had no response back

There is a post on another igaming forum relating to our extortion from facebook, however am keen to know if anyone on here has had a similer message from fb or similar happened to them and if so how did you fix the problem?

[justbookies]

however am keen to know if anyone on here has had a similer message from fb or similar happened to them and if so how did you fix the problem?

As I say, had all ads banned for one page of ours but they work ok for a newer page at the moment, not that I am bothering with the advertising anymore as money down drain. Facebook obviously police this sporadically and very inconsistently. I think what your experience says is not to rely on facebook too much for any crucial long-term revenue.

Facebook, with their own real-money gambling, are hypocrites accepting money from big boys and kicking / banning anyone else. They will blow out totally in the end. Apart from their advertising not working for anyone, I don't see it being a 'cool' platform for a younger generation. If you are into the share market & CFDs then it must be a "sell, sell, sell."

[LizzyB]

I had a look at FB advertising a while ago and found that they did have restrictions on advertising i.e. their ppc ads not a facebook fan page. I guess it is understandable as the majority of their members are probably young and easily influenced, so gambling adverts probably not what they want, unless they target them specifically at adults. I also am not sure how many people actually click on ads in facebook, so probably not the best place to advertise.

LizzyB