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I've been running ads on Facebook for a few months and have seem a good stream of traffic from there. I'm running a niche dating site, and here's my average CTR :

Females 0.5% (0.5 click for every 100 impressions) Males 2.0% (2 people click for every 100 impressions)

And my average CPC (cost per click) :

Females 9c Males 2c

I know this is hard to quantify but are my CTRs good overall or should I be expecting better numbers ? I run campaigns for about a week and then rotate ads when CTR starts to fall off a bit.

thanks in advance.

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Obviously this is going to vary greatly by what you're offering but I'd say that sounds pretty good vs. what I've seen for my campaigns in a completely different industry. I've been trying to find out good rates myself, researched a lot and haven't found anything. Even contacting Facebook team they wouldn't say anything.

You're doing it right in keeping the creative fresh. I'd recommend you keep experimenting with variables and see if you can improve the performance. Some thoughts:

  • New campaigns, as you're doing.

  • Test different images, different headlines, different verbiage.

  • I had a firm really push the concept of video advertising on Facebook. I haven't checked it out yet but it's worth doing some research.

  • Go a little crazy and really think "outside the box" to try some new and very different campaign ideas.

  • Time of day / time of week also has an impact so look at what times your ads are performing best and perhaps eliminate other times.

  • Are you tracking these clicks through to determine quality of clicks? So for example, if your primary goal is a registration and a completed profile, do you know what percentage of the clicks for males and females from Facebook convert to that goal vs. the rate of other types of advertising you're doing?

Best,

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chris please see my answer separately, it wouldn't let me post a "long" comment. – Sherif Buzz Oct 11 '10 at 0:57
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Thanks Chris for your reply.

I wouldn't say the Facebook team is the most helpful or for the matter the most polite or consistent (but that's another story:))

Could you elaborate more on your video ads idea ?

I've hit some sweetspots (with males it's photos of "homely girls", with females it's hearts, a guy proposing, etc) but even I rotate those.

I didn't realize that you could run ads only during specific hours - that's a feature of Adwords that i used a lot - for dating most signups are evening/late night, most clicks during the day do not convert and are generally a waste i find.

I have conversions setup at the FB level and I also have very detailed goals setup in Analytics to keep track of my conversion rates.

I tend to focus on one adverting channel at a time, this month i'm doing Facebook after doing 2 months of Adwords text ads. Next month I'm doing Adwords image ads.

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You'd have to do some online searching re: video ads because I haven't done them myself. But I am going to test the concept shortly. Sounds like you're doing the right things. Yes, I had the same experience with the FB folks. No help at all other than some tutorial stuff on the site. Frustrating. – Chris Oct 11 '10 at 15:41
Don't get me started on the hit-or-miss approval of ads :) – Sherif Buzz Oct 11 '10 at 19:35

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