The Love/Hate Relationship with Facebook Advertising

For many advertisers, Facebook’s marketing platform has been a love/hate relationship. Facebook offers advertisers access to one of the biggest networks in the world, enhanced with the ability to target people by demographic and interest categories that is unmatched by other platforms.

Unfortunately, the bidding platform on Facebook has been less than ideal. This is due to the fact that it charges advertisers for any activity that is taken with an ad, which included not only clicks to the website, or the intended conversion action, but also likes, comments, and shares. While these charges may have been advantageous for the social platform’s bottom line, it left a bad taste in the mouth of advertisers and made it difficult to get a positive ROI from conversion-focused campaigns.

Big Changes for Facebook Advertisers

On July 8th, Facebook began focusing on objective-based clicks when it charges advertisers for their ads. This will remove charges for likes, shares, and when people click on calls-to-action like “continue reading”.

Objective-based clicks mean that advertisers will only pay for the clicks that matter, which mostly fall into the “clicks to another website” bucket. This change is great for advertisers because it helps to align their Facebook campaigns more closely with their goals. Ultimately, CPCs will likely rise, but they will also carry a greater importance, improving return on investment.

Moving Forward with Facebook Advertising

The big question is what do you need to do next?

If you are running ads through Ads Manager or the Power Editor then you don’t need to do anything, the CPC changes are already in place (or will be soon – you will receive a message when they happen). Make sure to check out the changes to the platform as far as reporting is concerned and continue advertising. Take advantage of what should be a positive change to your ROI.

Read more about the changes on Facebook’s Blog.