Promoting a post on Facebook, is it worth it? A poor man's analysis.

Originally published on Kapuno in the Technology community

I promoted a post for my personal account yesterday evening. You can see it in the attached photo and it’s publicly viewable on my profile (http://www.facebook.com/cyrus.radfar/posts/243947495731194) at this moment.

Was it worth it? Can’t tell you, Facebook didn’t provide me enough data.

I paid $7 to reach 1.4x or 30% more people. So if we assume that I reached 100% of my friends at ~500 people, then I paid to reach 150 people at ~ 5 cents / person or a $50 CPM (cost-per-thousand).

As I said before, Facebook doesn’t tell me the number of people I reached total so I could’ve reached more or less people because the post was public and had likes/comments.

Will I do it again? I could see myself doing it if/when I have something big to promote but I’m not 100% sure of the viral cost of sponsoring it. Meaning, are people less likely to “like” or share a sponsored post.

So much to think about, any of you in interested in Social Media or Online Advertising want to chime in?

P.S. For the sake of discussion, the sponsored post had 8 likes and 5 comments at the time that the image was taken.

Responses

Brandon Racer

November 01, 2012

What if you promote a post through an existing FB app? Since the app data is presented in FB Insights and there is an assumed viral lift due to promotion, would you be about to glean more meaningful conclusion from FB Insights?

Cyrus Radfar (November 01, 2012)

When you promote an app or page they provide you demographics, impressions (ad views) and unique views. I haven’t tried Facebook ads for a page yet but I’m sure someone who’s in this community could tell us more.

Justin Higgins

November 01, 2012

It’s funny because I really find the whole concept to be pretty user and business hostile. I think there’s an implicit agreement when you actually go out of your way to follow someone or some organization/business that you’ll see what they post. With Twitter this is obvious - if I follow something on twitter, I know that I’ll see it in the timeline. With Facebook, not only is it frustrating to find out that the people who “like” your page aren’t going to see everything you post, but as a user it’s frustrating because you’ve gone out of your way to like a page for a reason. Finding out that you aren’t actually seeing everything you expected to is irritating. Facebook does provide a mechanism of course for a user to ensure they see everything, but they don’t make it obvious. I wondered why Facebook doesn’t make it easier, until I saw this whole plan for sponsored posts. I think things like promoted tweets, sponsored stories, etc. are fine, but doing something that interferes with the normal concept of a timeline and making it even more unlikely that you’ll see what you expect to see seems a step too far.

Cyrus Radfar (November 01, 2012)

I agree, at first it seemed like it was a bit like they’re saying: “hey we connect with all your friends” on one hand and “now pay us or you won’t know if they actually saw it.”

That said, I’m leaning towards it being reasonable because, even if they did show everyone. People have too much content streaming in and the extra highlighting of the content can make the difference.

Re: Twitter, I they don’t have a low budget option like Facebook’s $7 / post.

Justin Higgins (November 01, 2012)

Yeah, I think it’s reasonable - clearly the issue of what to do with the timeline is a difficult one - although I still prefer Twitter’s approach to still show you all tweets. I think what’s needed is a solution similar to third party Twitter clients, that let you create filters/lists/etc. and follow things individually.

I just think that Facebook needs to make it so that it’s easier/more obvious for users that they are missing some things, and make it easier for them to see them. It’s still fine to have concepts of sponsored/promoted posts, but I don’t think Facebook should intentionally make it difficult for a user to be able to see everything from someone they follow.

Lauren Thorp

November 01, 2012

I pay for promoted posts on my startup’s page from time to time, mainly for content that has the potential to generate revenue (new product releases, etc.) In my experience, it’s been a decent way to advertise on a very small scale. I haven’t tested it with big bucks yet.

For $10, on my last promoted post a week ago, it generated 8,059 views. The breakdown: 1,230 organic (about 50% of total Fans- we have a decent Edgerank), 210 viral, and 7,067 paid views.

That works out to about 0.1 cent/view or $1.42 CPM. Not bad. That specific post generated about $110 in revenue with 2 new paying customers, or roughly a $5 CPA. I’ll take it.

Interesting to note, that post had the second highest amount of engaged users out of all posts for the month with 391 engaged users. (We do about 60-80 posts per month, almost all unpaid). I don’t think that this is a cause/effect relationship by promoting the post, but rather due to the content.

Cyrus Radfar (November 01, 2012)

Can you actually check/test ‘EdgeRank’ like you can for PageRank?

Lauren Thorp (November 01, 2012)

There’s this: http://edgerankchecker.com/ But don’t know if that’s accurate. I was saying ours was “decent” more anecdotally, as I’ve read that most brands have somewhere in the ballpark of 15-25% of their fans actually seeing their posts.

Cyrus Radfar (November 01, 2012)

Really amazing feedback Lauren, thank you!

Lauren Thorp (November 01, 2012)

Of course! Really excited to dig into Kapuno.

Nick O’Neill

November 01, 2012

I think Facebook’s lack of transparency on metrics is brilliant on their part :) They get to charge you for displaying “more impressions” without ever disclosing what that means. I’d love to have impression stats on my personal page the same way Facebook Pages have stats.

Cyrus Radfar (November 01, 2012)

I recall my days at Clearspring when I’d have the debate of how transparent to be with metrics for a number of reasons and I can see the debate at Facebook as well.

It definitely is odd that you, with you 1 trillion friends and me with my dozen or so pay the same amount to sponsor a post.

Have you tried it yet to see the impact? If so, what did you see?

Nick O’Neill (November 01, 2012)

They haven’t enabled sponsored posts on my profile yet :(

Justin Higgins

November 06, 2012

Interesting article about this on Ars Technica (especially addressing my concern, which is whether Facebook is intentionally “breaking” things to make this necessary/desirable): http://arstechnica.com/business/2012/11/is-facebook-broken-on-purpose-to-sell-promoted-posts/

Justin Higgins

November 07, 2012

And, maybe Facebook isn’t intentionally breaking things (although I would still argue that it’s an ongoing problem/issue that it’s not clearer to the typical Facebook user when they aren’t seeing everything they expect to see): http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/07/killing-rumors-with-facts-no-facebook-didnt-decrease-page-news-feed…