Allen Stern at CenterNetworks has an interesting post about an experiment he did recently. In it he tried advertising for his startup on Facebook to see how well the ad would do. He gives hard facts in the post but this short quote pretty much says it all...
While I get that people updating their Facebook status or posting a photo from the bar last night might not be in the proper mindset for my service, it's really a bit shocking just how poorly the ad has performed.
The news here isn't that the ad performed poorly it's that the ad performed horrendously. Literally a disaster (click on the link for one of the saddest graphs I've ever seen in my life).
His experience isn't an aberration either. I've looked and I've yet to see anyone who has been really successful by advertising on Facebook. After considering it a while I think I know why.
Web ads are a "first look" business. No one reads a whole web page and then looks at the advertisement. If you're an advertiser using Web ads you have to grab the person's attention when the page first loads or accept you've lost that potential sale. This is a point that can't be stressed enough.
Now, look at this picture of Time Square...
(Photo by Terry Ratcliff)
When you first looked at that picture, and I mean the first few seconds, did you notice any of the ads? Did you see a Discover ad, a Chevy ad, etc... Or did you just look at it as Time Square?
Most will just see Time Square as a whole.
The reason for that is there's just too much going on. The clutter takes on a majesty all it's own and that's what you focus on. Only after you've been looking at it for a minute do you start to focus on individual pieces of the picture.
Which is the problem with a Facebook ad. When someone first loads their Facebook page they probably have 20 things visible and that first few seconds is spent just taking in the page as a whole. Problem is those few seconds, as I pointed out above, are a web ad's window of opportunity.
Once people start to focus in on the individual parts of the page they're invariably going to zero in on the actual content leaving your ad in the dust. The end result is lots of impressions and virtually no clicks.
Now the promise of Facebook was that it could get around this problem by targeting ads towards a specific demographic in a way so precise that the Ads actually become content. But having paid special attention to any story from people advertising on Facebook I can tell you they've failed at that goal.
Until they find a way to succeed I'd consider Facebook a bad investment for any advertiser.