Facebook Impression Mystery Solved

Posted on January 6th, 2008 in Facebook

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If you have been doing facebook ads, you have probably noticed that every week, starting Sunday all impressions stop unless you bid a ridiculously high amount per click and then slowly during the week you have to bid less and less to get impressions. Nickycakes and many others have been baffled as well as frustrated by this phenomenon that started about a month ago.

After thinking about it for a while, the Cakes has come up with a pretty solid theory as to why this is happening. When you make facebook ads, you are competing for impressions with not only other self-serve advertisers, but with the big advertisers as well. Big businesses like target, bally fitness, mortgage companies, etc, pay thousands of dollars to facebook for CPM (pay per impression, not click) ads. They’re the normal banner ads that you see when you use facebook. These people are generally bidding higher to have their ad shown than normal advertisers.

Self serve facebook ads have a daily spend limit. When you reach this limit, your ad will stop being shown, giving other advertisers a better opportunity to have their ads shown at a lower cost, that’s why you’ll generally get more traffic at the end of the day than at the beginning, but why the weekly cycle? Nickycakes’ theory is this: The major CPM advertisers have a weekly budget, not a daily one. Once most of these budgets run out, toward the middle or end of the week, self serve facebook ads, by default, get more face time, and can bid lower for impressions. Mystery solved.

If you haven’t tried facebook ads yet, you can check out these 2 posts to get you started.  Most all of the information is still solid:

Gaming Facebook Ads Part 1
Gaming Facebook Ads Part 2