How to place Facebook ads

Quick Links:
1. Generally how it works
2. How to place the ads
3. Tips for tweaking this

A. Generally how it works

Each Facebook ad focuses on a particular article on EveryStudent.com (or your version of EveryStudent.com). By advertising specific articles, rather than the home page, you can continue running ads over time, on various topics, bringing them to different articles on your site. The ads given on this site tested very well with students!

If you want to create your own ads (headline, photo, text), for your own culture, that's great. Study the ones we present, in order to observe some principles. (Having a good ad is most important.) Also take a look at Facebook's advice given here: http://www.facebook.com/ads/best_practices.php

Pay-per-click:
Facebook gives you a couple of ways of running ads with them. We recommend running "pay-per-click" ads on Facebook. You decide how much you're willing to pay for someone to click on your ad, and you set that limit. Unlike newspaper or magazine advertising, you do not pay for your ad to be displayed. You only pay when someone "clicks" on your ad, taking them directly to the article on EveryStudent.com. Thus, you only pay for results. There is no wasted money.

You might think, "Great, I would like to pay one cent, for each click of my ad." Wouldn't we all? ☺ If your price is too low, Facebook will not show your ad. So you need to find out what click bid (click price) will cause Facebook to show your ad often, and generate lots of clicks on the ad.

From our testing in the U.S. (where there is a lot of advertising competition) we found that we needed to set our ads at 35 cents per click. However, you might not need to spend more than 10 cents per click. You will just have to test some ads to find out.

In Facebook advertising, you will also set a daily spending limit. Once students click on your ad reaching that total amount, Facebook stops displaying your ad that day. You could set your limit at $5, or $20, or $350 a day! Whatever amount you want.

B. How to place the ads

First, go through the ads we give you and right click on each photo, and save each photo to your computer. You might want to put these photos all in one folder and call it "Facebook ads." Now you have them ready to upload to Facebook's advertising page.

On your personal Facebook page, scroll to the bottom of the page and click on "Advertisers." On the next page, click on the green rectangle, "Get Started."

1. Fill in the article page URL in the box. (We give you the address for EveryStudent.com - you pick the page corresponding to your site.)

2. Fill in the headline we give you, the body (text) of the ad, and then upload the corresponding photo.

3. Pick where you want your ad shown - entire country, or city, etc.
   male/female - leave these unchecked.
   Set your age from 18 to 22 (or maybe up to 24 or so if you'd rather).
   Keywords - leave empty.
   Education: click the button for "In College".
   Now a box will appear where you can begin to type in the name of the university. You can enter several if you'd like. If you don't want to specify, just leave it blank and all of the universities in the location you chose will be included.
   Leave everything else in # 3 empty.
   (Note: you will see at the end of # 3 a message from Facebook showing you how many people your ad could reach.)

4. Name your campaign - you might use the name of the article.
   Chose Pay for Clicks (rather than Pay for Views)
   Daily budget: enter your daily spending limit
   Max Bid: enter the most you are willing to pay per click. You do NOT have to stay within their suggested amount. Feel free to go much lower.
   Schedule: It is easiest to start and stop this ad over time, if you select the first option, "Run my ad continuously starting today." Even right after you start it, you can put it on "pause." Then you can start it whenever you are ready. And this gives you the easy option of starting to run this ad again in a few weeks.

Click continue.

On the next page, "Review Ad" please read your headline and copy closely to check for any typos. You cannot change it once you place the ad. Also check to see that your daily limit and price per click is as you wanted it. If not, click "Change Ad" and fix it. If it's ok as is, click "Place Order."

C. Tips for tweaking this

Facebook is not particularly helpful in explaining their system. It requires trial & error and then drawing conclusions. We have done this kind of testing for you and discovered the following.

Facebook measures how many students at any one time could have seen your ad, which they call "Impressions." Your ad has to be shown enough times, for students to click on it. If you only have 0 impressions, that means your click bid was too low, and Facebook is simply not showing your ad. If your impressions are 20, Facebook is only barely showing your ad. Impressions should be in the hundreds or thousands.

To really understand this, realize that Facebook wants to make money.
Therefore, they will show your ad in whatever way helps them make the most money. If your ad is getting lots of clicks, they're happy. Or if your click bid is high, they're happy. Or if your daily budget limit is high, they're happy.

An example.
Let's say your daily budget limit is $30.

If you set your click bid at $2.00/click, Facebook will show it a lot, and you'll probably hit your daily budget limit in a few hours...and get 15 students to your site ($2 x 15 clicks = $30).

If you set your click bid at $.20/click, you have the potential of getting 150 students to your site before you hit your budget limit, IF Facebook shows your ad enough & if students click on it. Facebook will show your ad as long as tons of students are clicking on it....so that they make sure you spend your full $30 that day. But if Facebook sees that only a handful of students are clicking on your ad, they're going to take it down, and give that advertising space to an advertiser that will make them more money.

And here's a surprise, if your ad is doing well, Facebook will charge you LESS than your click bid. We might bid $.35/click, but be charged $.31/click or even less.

As Facebook decides how often to show your ad, they are looking at two factors:
      -- your click bid (how much you've said you're willing to pay per click)
      -- the ad's CTR (click-thru-rate - what percent of people who see your ad, actually click on it)       -- your daily budget.

Of these, CTR (click-thru-rate) is most important. A pretty good CTR is .06% or better (.07, .10, .14, etc.) If your CTR is .04 or less, it's not an ad that students are interested in. Time to write a better ad, change the photo, change the headline, or all of that. Or, you could try increasing your click bid, but you'll probably just spend money faster, finding out no one is interested in the ad.

IMPORTANT: Ads tend to fade in their effectiveness by the third day. So, run an ad for 2 or 3 days at a time. And then pause that ad and unpause the next ad to run. If you set up all of your ads, and just go in for a minute every two or three days to pause and unpause the next ad, you'll have a very smooth, well-functioning campaign.

If you have questions, please email marilyn.adamson@uscm.org