When Facebook Is Actually the Problem and When It's Just You
Facebook advertising performance issues can stem from both platform-related problems and advertiser misconceptions. External factors like end-of-quarter budget drains and holiday season competition affect CPM and traffic quality, while advertisers often make unfounded assumptions about optimal ad timing and audience behavior.
Summary
The speaker discusses how Facebook advertising problems fall into two categories: legitimate platform issues beyond advertiser control, and problems resulting from advertiser assumptions and strategy errors. On the platform side, serious problems do occur, particularly at the end of each quarter when large advertisers spend down budgets, causing CPM rates to increase and traffic quality to decline. The speaker emphasizes that Facebook's algorithms and bugs have not been completely fixed, contrary to what some might assume. The speaker advises against running ads during major American holidays, as many advertisers simultaneously increase their budgets for holiday promotions, creating additional market competition. The speaker then pivots to addressing common advertiser misconceptions, using personal experience as an example. The speaker previously believed that only running ads Monday through Thursday was optimal and avoided weekend testing based on the assumption that no one shops on weekends. However, this assumption proved incorrect. The speaker explains that for many brands, weekends actually represent the best performing days because that's when people have the most free time. The overarching message is that advertisers should not make blanket assumptions about timing and audience behavior, but instead analyze their specific data and test different approaches.
Key Insights
- Serious Facebook advertising problems occur at the end of each quarter when large advertisers drain budgets, causing CPM to increase and traffic quality to decline
- Facebook's algorithms and bugs have not been completely fixed, which continues to cause performance issues
- Running ads during major American holidays is not recommended because many advertisers simultaneously increase budgets for holiday promotions
- The speaker previously assumed weekends were poor days for advertising and avoided testing, but discovered that for many brands weekends are actually the best performing days
- Different brands have different optimal performance days based on when their audience has free time, making day-of-week generalizations unreliable
Topics
Transcript
[0:00] So from time to time, there are serious problems directly with Facebook advertising. And it is completely out of your control. This usually happens at the end of the quarter, when large advertisers drain budgets, causing CPM to increase and traffic quality to decline. It would be foolish to assume that Facebook's algorithms and bugs have been completely fixed. This is not true at all. I don't recommend running ads, especially during major American holidays. Many advertisers [0:31] are increasing their budgets for the holidays because of all these holiday promotions. I used to think, " Dude, I'm only going to run ads from Monday to Thursday." I won't be testing anything over the weekend. "Nobody buys anything on…
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