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False Facebook advertising

yagoparamo

Boss
Dec 30, 2009
1,883
480
First Name
Yago
Very interesting four our community:




Published on Feb 10, 2014
Evidence Facebook's revenue is based on fake likes.
My first vid on the problem with Facebook: The Problem With Facebook - YouTube
I know first-hand that Facebook's advertising model is deeply flawed. When I paid to promote my page I gained 80,000 followers in developing countries who didn't care about Veritasium (but I wasn't aware of this at the time). They drove my reach and engagement numbers down, basically rendering the page useless. I am not the only one who has experienced this. Rory Cellan-Jones had the same luck with Virtual Bagel:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-...

The US Department of State spent $630,000 to acquire 2 million page likes and then realized only 2% were engaged.IG report: State Department spent $630,000 to increase Facebook ‘likes’

I thought I would demonstrate that the same thing is still happening now by creating Virtual Cat (http://www.facebook.com/MyVirtualCat). I was surprised to discover something worse - false likes are coming from everywhere, including Canada, the US, the UK, and Australia. So even those carefully targeting their campaigns are likely being duped into spending real money on fake followers. Then when they try to reach their followers they have to pay again.

And it's possible to be a victim of fake likes without even advertising. Pages that end up on Facebook's "International Suggested Pages" are also easy targets for click-farms seeking to diversify their likes. Has Facebook

Thanks to Henry, Grey, and Nessy for feedback on earlier drafts of this video.

 
While this is certainly a compelling video, the Facebook fraud video is not entirely accurate.

To be clear, Facebook ads is not the "legit way for buying likes," as the author claims. Facebook ads and promoted posts are about exposure, not likes. You are buying exposure. So when you think about that context, you also need to think about who you are trying to expose your content or brand or product to. I mean seriously, what kind of quality did they really expect to get on 2 fake companies?

What isn't addressed is what happens when you runs managed campaign targeting a real product at a relevant audience. When this is done, you rarely see the fake likes from click farms being referenced here. All this video really illustrates is that this person foolishly spent a lot of money trying to advertise in a marketing medium they really didn't understand without employing the services of someone with expertise.

Click farms are certainly a reality that one must be aware of when advertising online and especially on social media. Dealers didn't run their own printing presses, cut their own radio spots or produce their own tv commercials when traditional made up the bulk of ad spend, so why would they think digital media would require any less expertise to be effective?
 
I posted a long explanation of this video, for some reason the moderator didn't approve it.

I knew it was fishy when he was talking about how his post only reached 8 people, 2% of his fan base (average pages only receive 2-5% reach per post). Marketers know that Facebook continues to reduce your reach, which ultimately rewards the pages who create strong, engaging content. If your page reach drops, but you continue to do great social media work, you won't drop nearly as far as your competitors. His post only reached 8 people, and was a large paragraph, not broken up, with no image. Facebook will not reward this type of post and put it higher in our news feeds.

Marketers and page managers need to monitor their pages on a daily basis and observe the traffic they are getting from ads. Once a month, click through the last 50 people who liked your pages (if you didn't get at least 50 new fans, private message me!). Scan their profile, where they live, what do they post, etc, and see if you're happy with the results. We are happy with all of our stores who use a certain social vendor, but will continue to monitor their successful weekly.
 
The reach was bad because of the way the algo works. They show your posts to a few people and see if they engage. Think of it as a trial balloon. If people like, comment, share, etc... then the post is exposed to more people over time. If you have 100 Likers and a post is seen by 10% in order to gauge interest that means only 10 people saw it. In the case of fake Likers he's saying a percentage of that 10% aren't real so if 3 are fake only 7 out of ten real people will see the post. That's why his engagement tanked. You effectively have fewer "real" people who will engage and that will kill your organic reach. It's an ugly vicious cycle. I don't think any business is happy about the pay for exposure model FB is adopting. The click farms just add insult to injury.
 
I appreciate your insight Glenn.

From what we have seen with our stores, we are very pleased with the results we're getting. It is frustrating to go to a pay for exposure model but if you're adapting before your competitors, you'll be successful. But as an investor in Facebook, I don't mind the pay for exposure model, only way to keep growing the revenue!