Facebook ads

In short, is it worth it?

 

What do people think about it? Has anyone done it to promote their series?

Tags: ads, facebook, marketing

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Permalink Reply by Rich Mbariket on June 12, 2011 at 9:39pm
It's expensive to advertise period. Whether its worth it or not is relative. I advertise WSN on Facebook and write it off. So for me its worth it getting the site out there.
Permalink Reply by Ryan Byrne on June 13, 2011 at 11:44am
The web series I shot received an Arts Council Grant after we had finished shooting, while I will use it partly to reimburse myself, I am planning on buying some facebook ad space with it as well. This will give me a chance to try it out using money I was not really expecting to have (grants are a fickle thing and this was the first time we'd ever received one).
Permalink Reply by The Inland Sea on June 13, 2011 at 4:57pm
Thanks for your input guys. Can't make up my mind whether I should spend a few bucks on it... Is there a way to gauge how much interaction you get from a campaign?
Permalink Reply by Rich Mbariket on June 13, 2011 at 5:02pm
The interaction is between you and your fans and between your fans and each other. But YOU have to drive that conversation like I do here on WSN via blogging, forum discussions and welcoming new members when they join and responding to comments left on my blogs and content. It's a FULL TIME JOB!
Permalink Reply by The Inland Sea on June 13, 2011 at 8:05pm
Yeah, it's definitely a full time job! Might have to start looking to recruit someone to help out with the social media marketing. Just having someone plug it into their channel would be useful I suppose.
Permalink Reply by Christopher Dye on June 13, 2011 at 6:20pm

I have. I posted about this in April when I did a two day Facebook ad run. I'll repost some of what I wrote.

 

Facebook ads do work in gaining 'fans' for your page.

 

All in all I was surprised how many 'likes' I gained. 10 minutes after the ad started I was curious to see if there were any new 'likes'. I was figuring one or two, but I was pretty surprised that there were already 20 new 'likes' within those first 10 minutes.

So how many 'likes' did I get over the whole 2 days? 297 (at the time). Consider I only had 7 originally and I knew most of them.

I definitely targeted the sci fi movie comic con type crowd adding as many sci fi movie comic book keywords as possible along with movie titles that are similar to my web series.

Here are the numbers so you have a better idea how I approached the ad.

1.16 per click capped at $100 a day.

By the end, there were 1,633,422 impressions with the ad being clicked 793 times and of course 297 actually clicking the like button.

Now I think it's important to point out that even though I now have over 300 fans only a small percentage seemed to actually visit the website mentioned on the Facebook page and yet an even smaller percentage actually bothered to watch the preview episode I posted on the front of the website page. It's hard to tell but I think about 89 visited the webpage with only about 35 viewing the preview episode.

One thing you must do is monitor constantly how much is being spent. They email a link to do this. Make sure to refresh the page.

Even though I ran the ad for two days at $100 a day, it started to disturb me that the amount spent was going higher than $200 which was my total limit. Don't know why this is but I saw it happening and decided to let it go a little longer until ultimately pausing it at $270 spent with 297 fans.

Facebook does email you when they charge your credit card.

 

It's been a few months now and I'll say this: It's cool having over 300 fans for my web series page now, but I'd say 99 percent are 'inactive'. They don't respond to questions I post. They don't respond to clips or posts I put up. I might get a like or two here and there when I post a photo and as I mentioned before, very few actually watched the 'preview' episode I posted. Strange 'fans' indeed.

Permalink Reply by The Inland Sea on June 13, 2011 at 8:08pm

Thanks a lot for that very helpful response Christopher! 

 

I think it pretty much spells out my reservations from spending money on it... Say you spent $200 to get 35 people to watch one episode of your series. Sounds like rather expensive eyeballs, and little or no interaction benefit from it... 

 

Think I'll sit on the fence a bit longer with this one and keep exploring other (free) means for the time being. 

Permalink Reply by AfterTheBeast on June 14, 2011 at 8:18am
I had the same kind of problem with facebook ads.  I set some specs at the beginning and then it went over them without asking : )  Luckily it wasn't too much money for me.
Permalink Reply by Christopher Dye on June 15, 2011 at 8:49am
For me, I didn't because I monitored it closely and saw it as it was happening. I could've stopped it, but I let it go simply to reach 300 'fans'. Still not sure what to make of it all.
Permalink Reply by AfterTheBeast on June 15, 2011 at 9:13am
Did shoot them an email, but they gave me the runaround, and it wasn't enough money for us to really want to worry about it.
Permalink Reply by Double Espresso on June 15, 2011 at 1:34am
Complete waste of money, time and a exercise in the absurdity of validating your existence as a web series creator.
Permalink Reply by Christopher Dye on June 15, 2011 at 8:49am
I think you may be right.

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