facebook Pop Quiz #10: How can facebook ads be so bad?

Published on September 9, 2010, by jmacofearth in community building, design & user experience, social media, tech opinion.

If you don't know that placing a facebook ad is nearly free. And if you don't know that facebook makes it really easy to create your own ad, even providing templates and sample bad copy. You might wonder at the really bad advertising you see on facebook. In a poll of coworkers about a year ago, only two of twenty people in a room had ever clicked on a facebook ad. And only one of us, me, had ever bought anything from one of these ads.

Let's look at what makes them so terribly bad, in general.

So it costs about $20 to set up an initial facebook advertising account. And from there you can use their tool to build your own failing campaign. It's nice how they give you all these really cool metrics about views vs. clicks. And make sure you set it up so you only pay for clicks. Something like 0.03 per click will do you for a long time.

And then get ready for nothing. I'm sure they are not making their real money in this tedious process, but it sure makes for some funny ads. Here's the public link to my Bad Facebook Ads collection.

@jmacofearth
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