Believe it or not, the original add group only had a handful of ads. Like any zip/email submit offer, I targeted males age 13-20 in the US ( Non inclusive!!). Literally that’s it… No keywords no nothing, and just one image variation.  The most important factor that I found in these ads was including user attributes. By this I mean creating headlines like ‘Free iPad: Age 17 ONLY.” This technique alone allowed me to get over 13 million impressions for under $1.5K, and over 33,000 clicks at just $.04 cents a pop on day one. Impressive.

On day two I just let it ride, getting about the same results with higher numbers (campaign ran all day instead of half of the day as I had submitted them around noon to get approved,) and I dropped the dead weight of ads that were not performing. Pretty much anything over age 17 started to drop after day 1. My AM also contacted me and said the merchant liked the traffic quality and my commission was bumped up .30 cents.

However, when day three came thats when the real shit hit the fan. Facebook bans all my ads with user demographics in them (all of the ads I had at the time.) and copy cats started to appear. I immediately got some new ad variations together and created some new campaigns.

The ads were still making money so it became a cat and mouse game of creating ads over and over to keep up with Facebook deleting them for being “deceptive.” Finally on day four I got an email that free offers were coming to a close and I decided to pull out at the end of the day instead of risking a ban. I had plenty of other profitable campaigns running and it was not worth the risk. Literally a week or two later they updated the TOS signifying the death of “free stuff” offers.  The final numbers were in:

Clicks: 120,888

Cost: $4,835.52

Actions: 20,496

Net: $22,624.80

Profit: $17,789.28

Given the issues I ran into, if the offer had came out a month earlier I probably could have netted a lot more. I won’t say this particular offer is what ended free shit on Facebook but I can guarantee you it had something to do with it. Facebook needs to get with the picture and understand that marketing is deceptive for a reason, of people knew they had to complete X number of surveys and offers to receive something they would never click in the first place. They are completely anal about their “user experience” and its killing the ad platform. If people do not want to see the ads, they don’t have to, the ability is there to x them out so why ban the ads if the user can already do so for themselves?

Combine the spend cap with all of the new rules about “free” offers and the touchy subject of their “user experience,” a lot of people are having a hard time making profitable campaigns on Facebook. Gone are the days when you can throw up a few ads to “Test and Keep” your free ipad, throw a few user demos in the ad, and make $5,000 in a day. (More on that to come )

Right now is probably the best time to stop relying on Facebook for traffic, and start diversifying. Of course you should already be hitting up other large channels like Bing and the Google Content Network. Here are some other places to get some good traffic:

http://www.adside.com – self serve ppc contextual inline text ads
http://www.reseauselect.com – banner and offline targetted at quebec
http://web.blogads.com – banners/text ads on high traffic blog network
http://www.adtoll.com – self serve banners etc, similar to adbrite
http://elephant-traffic.com – ppv type ads on parked url’s – cheap
http://mediatraffic.com – ppv ads
http://casalemedia.com – self serve banners
http://www.widgetbucks.com – self serve text/widget ads
http://tribalfusion.com – media buy banner network
http://adclickmedia.com – self serve banners and contextual widgets
http://premiumaccess.com – premium banner ad networ
http://kontera.com – inline contextual text ads
http://www.adroll.com – self serve banners
http://pubmatic.com – ad network
http://bidvertiser.com – contextual and banner ads
http://cpmstar.com – banners display aimed at gaming sites only
http://adengage.com – banners/text, similar to adbrite, allow weekly buys
http://finditquick.com – text ads
http://technoratimedia.com – banners
http://chitika.com – search related contextual display ads
http://www.mediawhiz.com – banners/display, media buys
http://cpxinteractive.com – banners/display, media buys
http://clicksor.com – banners
http://advertising.com – display/benners, media buys
http://www.interclick.com – banners, high volume media buys
http://adtoll.com – banners/display/text ads, adbrite clone, cheap
http://valueclickmedia.com – banners, display/media buys
http://google.com/adwords – you already know about this…
http://advertising.aol.com – variety of solutions on AOL inventory
https://adcenter.microsoft.com – search and content text/contextual ads
https://marketingsolutions.yahoo.com – search/content contextual ads
http://miva.com – cheap search ads
http://www.specificmedia.com – banners/video display, media buys
http://www.canoeklix.com/accueil – text ads on the canoe.ca network
http://undertone.com – premium banners/display/media buys
http://7search.com – cheap search/direct domain ads
http://advertising.microsoft.com/ad-network – microsoft banner display/media buys
http://adbrite.com – display/contextual ads
http://www.adconion.com – video/banner ads, media buys
http://advertise.myspace.com – self serve banners on myspace
http://facebook.com/ads – self serve ads on failbook
http://plentyoffish.com – coming soon self serve ads
http://www.collective.com – media buys, banners/display
http://buysellads.com – self serve banners on a range of design blogs
http://sponsoredtweets.com – sponsored twitter posts
http://ad.ly/ – more twitter ads
http://trafficvance.com – good ppv ad network
http://www.tattomedia.com/advertisers/ – banners/display/media buys
http://platform-a.com aol banner ad/media buy network
http://adready.yahoo.com – display ads/self serve banners on yahoo sites
http://adsonar.com – text ads on high traffic US site
http://adblade.com – self serve display ads, very good service
http://adsdaq.com – banners/media buying exchange
http://traffiq.com – self serve banners, media buy type thing
http://openx.org/market – banner exchange on open x ad network
http://adbuyer.com – media buying search/display exchange
http://searchfeed.com – search/contextual on parked pages. shit.
http://www.isocket.com/ – closed beta, but will be banner/display ads
http://www.rightmedia.com/ – self serve banner exchange
http://www.etology.com/ – banners/text ads, cheap
http://pulse360.com – ads on good high traffic inventory
http://www.bidplacesb.com/ – self serve banners, owned by AOL
http://advertising.ezanga.com – cheaper search and contextual
http://www.leadback.com – re-targeted ads at search traffic
http://appvert.com – farcebook apps ads, display
http://trianads.com – failbook app ads, display
http://www.burstmedia.com – banners/display/media buys
http://offerpalmedia.com – socialmedia app ads
http://userplane.com – social media advertising for media buyers
http://adchap.com – ads on various social sites, hi5, facebook, bebo et
http://cubics.com – social media ads
http://adknowledge.com – cheap ads, slow approvals
http://rockyouads.com – social media display ads
http://statusplug.com – ads on facebook fan pages
http://zohark.com – facebook app ads
http://xtendmedia.com – banner/display media buys
http://advertisers.federatedmedia.net – cpm banners on good inventory of sites
http://www.adperium.com/directads – display banners, self serve, similar to adbrite
http://z5x.net – display banners, media buys, large inventory

Facebook has recently surpassed 200 million users and is reportedly seeking up to $100 million for additional servers.

I have not gotten any response back from Facebook as to what the issue is but I really hope they get this shit ironed out soon… I cant even get to my Ads Manager to pause my campaigns… Which really sucks because I happen to be doing loads of split testing right now. If you know anything drop a comment or shoot me an email.

Note: If you can still manage your ads I would recommend pausing them if you will need constant access to them.

One thing I do want to point out is you may have a problem getting your ads through because of the URL redirection. For me, some of the foreign ads kept redirecting to an “international offer” if the traffic was not seen as coming from that specific targeted country. The problem is Facebook Interns could not get to the real landing page so they kept blocking the ads. You may have to use a redirection service that allows you to modify the link after the ad is accepted. Use the eHarmony landing page for your specific country (ex: eharmony .ca, .co.uk, .whatever) as the redirection URL from your redirection service. After the ad is accepted by Facebook, go back to the redirection service and change the end URL to the tracking code provided by NeverBlueAds. As long as your targeted your ads right, you should be in business. Also keep in mind you may want to set a really low bid for your cpc so the ads are not actually showing and costing you money when they are first accepted and don’t have any tracking.

Another weird thing I noticed is that no matter how much you increase your cpc, your impressions don’t seem to climb much in the other countries. Just for fun I set one of my ads at $1.25 cost per click and it got only 1,000 more impressions than an ad I ran at $.55 a click. I most likely wont win the TV, I’m only promoting through Facebook. Make a bunch of money, and win a sick TV.

The way the application works, every time you make a tweet on Twitter your Facebook status is updated. Why is this good? Whenever one of your friends on Facebook logs in they see the people who have most recently updated their status. So if you are constantly tweeting or have a Twitter Bot to do it for you, you will always be at the top of your friends’ Facebook page.

Traffic benefits aside, there are also other aspects to this technique. As more and more people see that you are tweeting away, they may become curious about Twitter and join. Using your account as the catalyst means they are very likely to follow you if they create an account increasing your network and power. And because the new accounts already know you or have some type of relationship with you on Facebook, you have built a stronger social network around yourself.

Go try it and by the end of next week I guarantee you will have an increased followship on Twitter.

Your Ads MUST Be Targeted
In order to run your dating ads you need to keep them all targeted. “Relashonsip Status” must be set to single, and a single value of EITHER male or female must be selected. The selected age range must start at 18, anything lower and your ads will be rejected. The “Interested In” parameter must also be used and set to a single value of EITHER male or female once again.

Image And Ad Text
When choosing an image, you cannot use anything “provacative” or “innaporopriate.” Obviously this is one of those grey areas that will require some testing. However, if it looks to much like pr0n chances are your getting rejected. Also, the ad text and/or image must “clearly state and represent the company or product that is being advertised.” In other words just make sure the name of the dating service is visible.

Hopefully this will help… Dating ads are totaly still making $$$. Just be creative and you cant go wrong. The sad truth is that there seems to be a never ending number of lonely people out there meaning you will always be able to make money. The hard part is finding a way to make good profits, and adhere to all the policies.

Facebook has been put under fire for allowing this little episode to go down. The applications have been changed over to SpeedDate and the users were never asked to opt-in or in other words without their consent. Even after 10 days of user complaints, Facebook has yet to react to the switch. This move also draws attention to Facebook’s extreme lack of control over the actual application code base. The very thing that made Facebooks app platform a success(its openness) could now be coming back to bite it in the ass.

Congrats to SpeedDate however. Im sure that out of the 500,000 people that use the three apps some of them are now using the service. Just another great example of how you can leverage social media. It really isn’t that hard to acquire smaller apps either. One could easily pick up a small app and flesh it out so it becomes more viral and do it on the cheap. Once you have a larger user base, you in effect have a grade a marketing tool that you can apparently change at will.

The first step is to go ahead find your offers, get some ads together, and set a budget to test with. I would say $10 or $15 should be enough for you to get your feet wet… This again will be determined by the offer you are promoting and here is why: Lets say you have an offer that converts at $2.50 a lead for migraine pills and another offer that converts at $22.00 a lead for baby diapers. You get your ads set up and within an hour your test budget has been used for both campaigns and you have some data to work with. If your CPC was an average $.28 cents per click we walk away with around 35 clicks. Lets say that in each campaign, only 2 clicks converted. Offer 1 only made us $5.00 so we ended up loosing $5 on that offer. On our second offer however, those two clicks converted into $44.00, a $34 profit from a $10 test. Not bad!

If you have not figured it out yet, Facebook traffic is very finicky. You can get 100+ clicks a day and only see 1 conversion for a $3.00 lead that cost you $25+ to generate. The big tip here is TEST, TEST, TEST! I have had much more success with offers that take more to complete than simple zip-submit offers. If anyone has questions or ideas for another “MMWF” post let me know!

For the first five or six days I was making upwards of $750 a day. When the second week rolled around it jumped up to around $900 a day and then started to decline very fast. By the end of the third week it dropped to about $200 a day. Average spending on Facebook was around $180 a day for this offer. I woke up Friday to find my ads deactivated and a stern warning from Facebook that these offers are not to be promoted again or risk my account being disabled. After doing some scouring on my other profiles, I noticed a large number of Acai related diet ads were gone… Are they nuking these offers regardless?

The thing is I was sending all the traffic (through my affiliate url cloak) directly to the landing page of the offer. I took an hour or two to get my own landing page and domain together and I now have ads running on Facebook again. They are converting about the same but holding better throughout the day. While I have not seen high spikes in conversions, it has also not gone below $300 since Friday.

I think Facebook is just very picky when it comes to the grey area that is being “deceptive.” Granted the default landing page was a little shady lookin’ but Facebook is just as picky if not more picky than your girlfriend. I recommend to anyone who has trouble getting ads through to invest some time in making your own landing pages.

Anyone else getting anything like this? I noticed there is still an amazingly large amount of diet ads going but I think Facebook might be cracking down after that Muffin Top b.s.