Is Promoting On Facebook A Scam?

[OldManTenno]

Here's a shot of the latest ad I did. You will see that the engagements versus people reached is only about 9.4%. But, the ones that did click on it were VERY active.

There are some factors that made this successful.
1. I got involved in communities on FB. I started doing in game giveaways. This helped gained their trust.
2. I used Gleam for the giveaway. You can set incentives for subbing to YouTube.
3. I'm giving away something all of them could want. People have to WANT to click on an ad. For regular content, the engagment is much lower.

I did this in middle October when I had 320 subscribers. I now have over 2700. I had 1 Twitter follower, now I have over 1500.

 

[JayZippo]

Here's a shot of the latest ad I did. You will see that the engagements versus people reached is only about 9.4%. But, the ones that did click on it were VERY active.

There are some factors that made this successful.
1. I got involved in communities on FB. I started doing in game giveaways. This helped gained their trust.
2. I used Gleam for the giveaway. You can set incentives for subbing to YouTube.
3. I'm giving away something all of them could want. People have to WANT to click on an ad. For regular content, the engagment is much lower.

I did this in middle October when I had 320 subscribers. I now have over 2700. I had 1 Twitter follower, now I have over 1500.

Thank you so much this post should get pinned or something. This is awrsome!

 

[Madiisuun]

i run a local page that advertises political events happening in the area for anyone hoping to get more invested in politics. i spent a little bit of our budget on instagram advertising, literally only paid $5 to advertise on instagram. the money was withdrawn from my bank account, but now every time i log in to facebook, facebook reminds me that i owe them $5 for an ad i ran over a year ago. not quite the same situation but i am pretty sketched out by them trying to double charge me and definitely won't advertise through instagram or facebook ever again lol :\

 

[Courtney Candice]

I don’t think you got scammed, maybe Facebook was referring to clocks on the add but not the actual video. You can advertise all you want but it’s up to the viewer if they are going to click the link and watch the videos.

 

[Gaijillionaire]

I recently tried promoting a Premiere of Season 5 of my Fallout 4 series on Facebook. I had 50 dollar budget for 5 days. It said it would take it to instagram too.

Awesome! I was psyched.

I paused the ad after I was charged about 15 dollars. Why would I do that?

Well... The details of the ad said I received 35 link clicks. That link went directly to the video on youtube. So when they clicked it... it loaded up my video and it started playing.

*scratches head*

OK. If that is so, how come I only have 24 views on the video. I am sure of 5-6 views (between my nephew, a couple loyal followers).

It reached 6200 people, all people who shown interest in Fallout 4. Not one like, not one share, not one page like.

Did I just get scammed by Facebook?!? I have my social media department looking it over to see what they think too... Something i snot adding up.

Not a scam, they are honest but it’s just very expensive

 

[Phiul]

How do you guys proceed to create a Facebook ad for your Youtube channel? It's so confusing, there are too many options, is there anything like a tutorial targeted for Youtube channels? Thanks.

 

[Dave2017]

It simply means that those who clicked on your ad did not watch the video for long enough for YouTube to count it as a view

Yep that is what it means and that is the exact problem with ads on facebook or adwords for that matter. NOT all videos/channels will benifit from this kind of promotion so you have to think twice before spending money on that. But I take it you didn´t know better (and how could you?) I made this mistake too and noe i´ve learned that this kind of promo dont resonate with my videos, channel or content, so you have to find other ways

 

[JayZippo]

I had one of our Social Media people look over what I did... because I deleted the ad in frustration she was unable to give me exacts, but she said everything was on the up and up EXCEPT for the click throughs to the youtube video. That she could not explain and had concerns about. As an FYI. The second a video starts, it counts as a view. We did a few experiments to confirm that. I just don't want people thinking that people can click on a video for 10 seconds and it won't count as a view. It does.

Bottomline, the SM person told me I probably should of just boosted the FB page for likes and follows. I said I had over 6,000 people seeing this ad, and not one liked the post, the page or anything. Only had alledgedly 35 click throughs to my video that did not register.

@OldManTenno had some great ideas and if I decide to throw more money away with facebook aka (****book) I will aim myself in that direction. FB is not a great place to promote Youtube channels.[DOUBLEPOST=1543235380,1543235240][/DOUBLEPOST]

I don’t think you got scammed, maybe Facebook was referring to clocks on the add but not the actual video. You can advertise all you want but it’s up to the viewer if they are going to click the link and watch the videos.

I thought of that too, but it clearly stated "clicks on the call to action button" which was the button to go to my video. So if you are right than FB's has their statistics all messed up. TY![DOUBLEPOST=1543236329][/DOUBLEPOST]

How do you guys proceed to create a Facebook ad for your Youtube channel? It's so confusing, there are too many options, is there anything like a tutorial targeted for Youtube channels? Thanks.

It is very confusing. I did this first one on my own despite having the huge knowledge base of the social media division at work. So for that, I am a dumba$s. The biggest issue I had was narrowing down the audience. Take your time and figure out who exactly you want to target. That might help a bit when diving into the confusing mess.

 

[OldManTenno]

@OldManTenno had some great ideas and if I decide to throw more money away with facebook aka (****book) I will aim myself in that direction. FB is not a great place to promote Youtube channels.[DOUBLEPOST=1543235380,1543235240][/DOUBLEPOST]
I thought of that too, but it clearly stated "clicks on the call to action button" which was the button to go to my video. So if you are right than FB's has their statistics all messed up. TY![DOUBLEPOST=1543236329][/DOUBLEPOST]
It is very confusing. I did this first one on my own despite having the huge knowledge base of the social media division at work. So for that, I am a dumba$s. The biggest issue I had was narrowing down the audience. Take your time and figure out who exactly you want to target. That might help a bit when diving into the confusing mess.

Glad to see you've looked deeper into it. I think probably the biggest problem is the audience. Did you set it to U.S. only? Also, what keywords did you use?

I may try an experiment of targeting just the U.S. with a certain budget and keywords then change it up to see if there is any difference. From what I stated in the previous post, I think a lot of Americans are just so overwhelmed with ads and are already up to date with the latest news that most of them are just dismissed. Also, If I boost a post on my general content, I get NOWHERE near the traffic as I did with the giveaway. This tells me two things:

-It has to stand out and be desirable to be effective. This is amplified even more in America. As good as your Fallout 4 series may be, most people have moved on from that. I bet if it were Fallout '76, you would see a massive improvement with the same settings.

-Like you said, FB needs a better system in place to help you with your post. I don't believe it should be too hard to implement suggested audiences since they already have stats on them. I am by no means an expert using FB ads, but maybe I should try to learn more and maybe do a tutorial. I think this is a good thread discussion.

 

[daniel burgio]

I once failed to select any actual countries for targeting and my Facebook was quickly picked up by a click farm in what I presume is Mexico. Clickfarms will eat your promotion budget up and get you empty likes. Also, if it hasn't been recommended yet, I'd suggest using your money on Google Adwords. You'll get asked "why is this an ad?" a lot, but it will help with exposure. You can target specific youtube channels to get your ads or even specific videos.