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The Cost To 'Promote' a Facebook Post: $200 To $500
nonprofiteer writes "There's been talk in recent months of Facebook's 'promoted posts' option. In beta testing, it cost about $5-10 dollars to get more of your friends/fans to see your posts in news feeds. Now that it's live, it's a bit more expensive, at least for those with big followings. On the Forbes Facebook page, the cost ranges from $200 to $500 to get from 50,000 to 250,000 people to see a given post. Another lame attempt at monetization, or will Facebook users actually pony up?"
This is what happens when everyone stops using RSS/Atom for syndication.
Many firms have publicly stated they were pulling from facebook ads because of lack or return on investment and intensive bot clicking.
Tomorrow is another day...
To get first post. Perhaps I should have paid more?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
RSS is sill used by a huge number of people, and the same kind of paid postings can happen there as well, although their visibility is the same as any other item. Also, in terms of advertising, it seems like a pretty good deal.
I often wondered why fb wouldn't allow user preferences to control their timeline. You are right. It is lame.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
Blasting it out indiscriminately, like spammers do, has a very low conversion rate. It looks like Facebook is going for a more targeted model based on what it can gleam from user profiles. But it all comes down to cost per conversion. $500 could be cheap, if your post is promoted to the right audience. This remains to be proven, of course. But I wouldn't automatically say that the price is too high.
The writing was on the wall. Everyone saw it coming since FB decided to monetize the site with FB credits, in-app purchases, etc.
Next: for a premium fee, select customers (i.e. advertisers) will be able to publish "stories" (i.e. ads) on everyone's wall, regardless of friendship status.
For a super premium fee, they'll be unblockable.
And on it's inexorable and inevitable drop to $2.30.
$500 to promote a post? Of course companies will pony up.
At that rate, $30,000 will get you 60 promoted posts. Say you post twice a day -- and we're assuming that you're not just posting the same thing over and over, here, but you have an actual strategy. $30,000 buys you an ad campaign that lasts an entire month.
Depending how you play it, it beats an ad in a magazine, which could easily run you $30,000 (or more).
Breakfast served all day!
If you are so sure it will drop, make a furtune by shorting the stock.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Well I called FB stock at 10$ by the end of the year. Let's see if I hit the nail on the head.
Real men don't need signitures!!!
The trouble with shorting is that you have to be confident about both the equilibrium state and the trajectory...
Predicting that Facebook is presently hilariously over-valued is easy(and likely correct); but predicting how fast shareholders will give up holding on to hope and/or hype is a great deal trickier.
Facebook has a fundamental issue. It has allowed/encouraged users to build a large 'friend' list. This inevitably means that users get overwhelmed; so Facebook does some analysis and tries to cut the chaff and guess what you don't care about seeing. The problem is that with it's tight one size fits all friends model it has a good chance of hiding stuff I do want to see.
We were almost reaching the point where it was normal to announce big events like weddings etc on your wall. Now the people who may have done this are likely going to rely on other communication forms that they know will reach everyone.
ETA on FB becoming replaced?
For fear that if I fail to comment on this subject, I'll be automatically labeled a terrorist by Authoritarian Intelligence, I half suspect that facebook can now predict the future of its many children. They will comply. And if they don't, well, they can advertise for free on their wall at Guantanamo bay.
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Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
Here is what's happening right now. Investors are not happy with poor performance and they are demanding more money. This idea was on a backburner probably for a while, but now that FB is showing not as profitable as they thought it would, they are trying this. They have dozens of other similar ones if this one works. This whole company has this one "product" and nobody saw the risk in that? It was a trendy thing to do, for a while, now it's less trendy, and in 10 years it won't be trendy. Don't get me wrong, I see the value in social networking: stay in touch with friends and family, creep on some hotties every once in a while, maybe read an interesting post here and there. But it has become the biggest shouting match in the world, and it's all nonsense. I don't even notice the ads any more. If somebody is posting too much and it becomes annoying I block their posts. You pay 500$ so your posts come up more often - I will block you. You pay more - I will remove you from my friends. You override that and I will stop using FB altogether.
not sure if i've ever seen one of these sponsored posts ... does facebook have to disclose that the post is a paid advertisement ?
http://mashable.com/2009/10/05/ftc-blogger-endorsements/
My blog
Putting it in quotes makes it sound like that's the comment GM made. What they actually said:
We regularly review our overall media spend and make adjustments as needed. This happens as a regular course of business and it's not unusual for us to move our spending around various media outlets - especially with the growth of social and digital media outlets.
In terms of Facebook specifically, we are reassessing our advertising, but remain committed to an aggressive content strategy with all of our products and brands, as it continues to be a very effective tool for engaging with our customers.
Of course you can take it as a polite way of saying "Facebook ads don't work". Or you could take it as a way of saying "we're trying something else to save money and that was bottom of the list". That same guy (before he got fired) also ended their relationship with ad agency Campbell-Ewald, who they'd been using for decades.
And now GM is reconsidering their decision to advertise on Facebook. Why would they do this? Because:
"We certainly don't want to walk way from 900 million consumers and we haven't walked away," Perry said. "We're a big proponent of Facebook."
It was certainly embarrassing - disastrous, even - coming on the eve of the IPO, and yes, it's nice grist to the mill of FB bashers. In reality, sometimes things aren't that black and white. Wasn't there a story here the other day where people were fiercely debating whether marketing and advertising are just a lot of nonsense anyway, with merely rudimentary metrics?
If you are so sure it will drop, make a furtune by shorting the stock.
It's a bit more tricky than that. You pay a fee each month You short a stock in the hope that the stock drops so much that You make up for the fees and make a profit.
This play requires that few want to short the stock (low fee) and that the wait isn't too long (too many fee payments).
So You need to get the timing right about a company that few others have doubts about in order to make real money.
TCAP-Abort
really now.. dont have to pay to #tag that #FaceBookSucks
Sponsored stories might increase placement in the News Feeds of people that are already fans of the sponsoring page, but an important part of their use is that they increase the placement of stories in the news feeds of friends of your fans. When a company pays for these, friends of people who have liked the site, shared the page that is being promoted, etc., are more likely to see an item about the liking/sharing/etc. in their news feed.
I think I disagree, Facebook might be different. Enough raw time has passed so that everyone has at least heard that "it's okay for normal housewives to be on Facebook", whereas I think what did Myspace in was the attempt to be edgy with the Under-25 crowd and bands.
So I think Facebook is becoming the Lock-In of Ordinary Family social media, and if indeed something topples them, it will be business news in the making.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Another lame attempt at monetization, or will Facebook users actually pony up?
A lot of column A, and a lot of column B.
> This is what happens when everyone stops using RSS/Atom for syndication.
This is what happens when stockholders with pockets $100 billion lighter start asking about return on investment.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Hmm. I think I've heard this comment before. Usenet, then dialup hubs, then "blogging", then forums, each used to be in this position. They still exist. Yes, these populations were tech savvy and FB is drop-dead easy, but the next product will have to be even easier.
I can't predict the future, but FB will leak members as the market fragments. Something will eclipse them entirely for it's core featureset, eventually. There's no way commercial companies can compete with the try-anything openness of the general web. Whatever does, it will have to (at least initially) tie-in to FB to bridge the gap. FB itself would dislike this but they may have no choice. Behold the Age of Social-Dashboards.
The trouble with shorting is that you have to be confident about both the equilibrium state and the trajectory...Well then buy a put option three years in the future. You can pick up the right to sell the stock at $18 in January 2014 for only $4.30 right now. If the stock price goes down to $2.30 as you think it will, then you can sell it for $18 minus your $4.30 for the put and laugh all the way to the bank.
Of course, to me, the fact that an out of the money Put is that high shows pretty good confidence that options traders think the price has some more drop left in it.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Facebook has all kinds of data analysis capabilities - I'm sure they didn't just pull this price out of their butt, but if they did, or if they are being pressured into these prices by investors, they need to nut up and let their data lead the way. What's a couple hundred bucks to a company selling a gigantic multi-million-$-revenue product - especially if facebook can use their data to target it and verify it?
Problems with bot clicks? Whatever, build that into the price. Also, I've never once clicked on a tv or newspaper ad, and yet advertisers seem to have no problem selling those.
Ze Atomic Device! It iz Ztolen!
Unfortunately, Charlie Sheen has enough money to pay to promote every single one of his posts to the entireity of Facebook. With a pay-for-views option, Charlie could soon top George Takei as most viewed celebrity... :P
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
If people want to pay this, fine. pay. All it does is undermine facebook's already thin legitimacy. Reminds me of when when digg sold off her front page.
No, you don't pay a fee each month. Not sure where you are getting that.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Oh, I never said that FB was the holy site to last forever. Just that whatever topples it would "be a Business Story". So I agree that something will eclipse them, but it will be much harder to topple than some other things. Whatever we think of the Zuck, he hired at least one team of managers somewhere in room 347 that is using his wads of cash somewhat intelligently to cement themselves into everything.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine