Facebook Ads

Last night I decided to create a Facebook ad to promote my photography. I was surprised at just how inexpensive advertising was. When you create an ad (limited to 135 characters), you choose between CPC (cost per click) or CPM (cost per impression/views/1000). With CPC, you only pay whenever someone clicks on your ad. With CPM, you pay for every 1000 views (impressions) for your ad. For each model, you place a "bid" for each click/1000 views. Facebook then selects which ads to display based on which has the higher bid. You can also target your ads based on demographics and keywords, and you set a daily maximum for how much you'd like to spend per day of advertising.

For my ad, I chose the CPM model since it "felt" like it would get displayed more often. Although, I honestly don't fully understand the difference between the two model s (leave a comment if you can explain it!). I targeted it to everyone within 50 miles of Amherst, MA, and I added keywords like "photography, photos, pics, wedding, graduation". According to their estimate, I would reach about 28,000 users. Based on the bids for other ads targeting my demographics, facebook suggested a bid of $0.24-$0.29, and I went with $0.27. At the time of this writing, my ad has had 14,619 impressions and 0 clicks.

I can understand why I've gotten 0 clicks despite so many views - I barely even notice the facebook ads, let alone actually click them. I'm only doing 1 day of advertising (with a max budget of $2.50) as well, which isn't very long at all. I think I'm going to experiment with different wording, keywords, and running times to see if anything works better. I'll also try running an ad for a full week closer to graduation. My hope is that folks who are talking to friends about wanting wedding/graduation photos will see my ad displayed and click it.

Update: My ad has finished its budgeted run of $2.50 with 18,138 views and 1 click.