Up untill now, I have never been the source of a highly criticized ad campaign anywhere let alone Facebook. In the week of running these ads, people really got stired up. There are over 30 MILLION  results in Google on the topic, and it even led Facbook to ban ads containing user attributes, and pretty much “free anything” offers all together, one of the reasons I waited to publish this post. I also got a lot of requests for some new Make Money on Facebook crap as my other posts were pretty popular and even got plugged by everyone’s favorite web celeb shoemoney.

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?

So with all of Facebook’s new regulation on their ad platform, a lot of affiliates have been getting fucked pretty hard by Facebook. Affiliates especially. There are tons of reports of people who were spending mid-to-high five figures getting their spend caps limited to $500 / day.

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

Looks like Facebook ads is down again. I noticed they have been having issues for the last view days. Around Sunday or Monday I started noticing some whack ass CTRs and click prices… Later that day I was unable to create or modify any ads and the service seems to be tottaly down. Not sure if this has been an issue previous to this incident but I’m sure it wont be the last with the growing pains they are facing being a new player in this market.

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.