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The Cost To 'Promote' a Facebook Post: $200 To $500

Posted by Unknown on from the really-expensive-syndication dept.

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.

9 of 117 comments (clear)

  1. Poor marketing investment by gagol · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Many firms have publicly stated they were pulling from facebook ads because of lack or return on investment and intensive bot clicking.

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    Tomorrow is another day...
    1. Re:Poor marketing investment by dav1dc · · Score: 5, Informative

      GM said it best the day before the FaceBook IPO: "FaceBook Ads Don't WORK!"

      http://www.minyanville.com/business-news/markets/articles/facebook-ipo-gm-advertising-pullout-ford/5/16/2012/id/41053

    2. Re:Poor marketing investment by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 4, Interesting

      For firms, it might not be that much of an issue? But what about people who do what they do for fun rather than profit, like popular bloggers? "Pay or your followers may miss your post" sucks for those people. Perhaps FB ran out of ideas to monetize, and use this to shift the burden of coming up with a good way to make money for this kind of stuff to its more popular members.

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      If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
    3. Re:Poor marketing investment by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 4, Insightful

      what about people who do what they do for fun rather than profit, like popular bloggers?

      Maybe they should not be trying to get their message out on Facebook. We still have an Internet that allows people to run their own system; it is not as though people have to go through Facebook to get to the websites they are trying to view.

      Facebook is a big corporation now, and they need to make money -- which means catering to other big corporations. At least they are becoming honest about why they exist (advertising) instead of continuing to pretend that they are on a mission to connect people to their friends. Popular blogs should look into being paid for advertising impressions rather than clicks as well -- it is a much better model.

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      Palm trees and 8
  2. i paid Slashdot $500 by MyLongNickName · · Score: 5, Funny

    To get first post. Perhaps I should have paid more?

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    See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
  3. It depends on the quality of the views by Palestrina · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  4. Writing on the Wall (no pun intended) by rodrigoandrade · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  5. Sounds like nothing to me by PCM2 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    $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).

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  6. Investors are squeezing by supertrooper · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.