A gremlin inside Facebook – or more likely a disgruntled employee – briefly hacked Facebook in the last few hours. They went in to the Facebook advertising page and changed the title description from “Advertising” to “Lying”. How do I know? An observant informant emailed me the screen grab before the page was changed. Nice start to 2009 for Facebook! [Update: Socialmediocrity also captured the page before it was changed.]
However, this small incident serves to highly a couple of more serious points.
First, it proves the Facebook machine isn’t prone to a few gremlins now and again. If an employee can run riot like this, who know what havoc they might wreak on the rest of the system.
Second, it merely continues to highly the fact that Facebook’s advertising targeting is legendary for being bad. As Guardian journalist Jemima Kiss recently Tweeted: “Consecutive ads on Facebook: ‘Essay writing – we’ll get you a 2:1″ and Bad credit? Get a credit card with 39.9% APR!’. Classy.”
The thing is, social media has rarely found its feet in online advertising. The extra data that exposing the social graph was supposed to provide has yet to translate into far more targeted advertising.
If Facebook knows I write for TechCrunch (it’s in my profile) and often post things on Facebook related to technology and business, then why do I get shown ads for Credit Rating Reports, as I did today?
On thing’s for sure – the economic downturn means sites like Facebook can ill afford to laugh off this sort of incident forever.
It’s an inventory problem Mike. When there’s nothing to advertise you with accurately, you get what’s left, namely, Credit Rating Reports.
If it’s an inventory problem, and Facebook is all about attention marketing, then does it serve their brand and service to show me crap ads? Maybe they should hang back and wait until they can serve me something with more relevancy? I would argue that the impact of really bad advertising on a ‘high attention’ site like Facebook is much more detrimental than on a media site like a newspaper’s.
You mean there’s advertising on Facebook? I think only you and Jemima have noticed.
Most people are on Facebook to network with friends and they are as receptive to being sold to as they would be if their group in a bar was infiltrated by sales people…
I just can’t see banner advertising working at this level on Facebook. But how about sponsorship of Facebook Groups with relevant suppliers to the special interest, for example?
Incidentally, the switch to “Lying” brings me a greater concern: if Facebook’s systems are so easy to hack, just how safe is our personal data?
Ian Hendry
CEO, WeCanDo.BIZ
http://www.wecando.biz
I used FaceBook ads to advertise a “simply happy news” blog – the click return was truely awful.
I got free advert credit ($50 I believe) from VISA and I felt ripped off..
Stumbleupon appears to be the semi “unknown” king of good returns for online ads.
oh, and Facebooks ad manager appears to be down now.
Wow, that’s something. I guess you trust the person sending you the screenshot and/or have verified that it wasn’t photoshopped? As an advertiser on FB, I’ve seen mixed results. Targetting for Norway specifically gets what appears to be pretty targetted click throughs, but conversions so far don’t match other channels.
I’ve hardly ever seen anything else other than Credit Reports, Casino or Dating Sites.
So much for contextual advertising eh? Profile says, “Married, with kids” etc, and they stick a bloody great ‘Join our dating site’ type advert on the page.
But with the help of Firefox and a few trusty plugins, I don’t see much advertising on Facebook now. (I don’t see advertising on most sites to be honest).
And conversion rates on Facebook are pants, so I wouldn’t ever use them again. (I probably targeted all those other people blocking advertising though)
I’d argue the bad targeting isn’t all Facebook’s fault, you actually have great tools to target but advertisers either choose, or don’t know how to use them.
Targeting for ‘Norway’ isn’t targeting at all, try using keywords to identify your audience. The keyword targeting can be based on group membership so in effect you can advertise to group members. At http://www.techlighenment.com we reguarly outperform Google promoting the same content.
Finally, low CTRs aren’t a problem for advertisers buying on a CPC basis! Low CTRs mean you get more impressions per click. A problem for Facebook? Yes. A problem for advertisers? Not at all.
It’s not just Facebook, it’s Google as well – cf my tweet:
“Googling ‘marin demo day uk’ on my BB Bold, at bottom of results is “Ad] – Find a Local Shag – See whos up for it – 84527.co.uk” -Er, not me…”
Shurely shome mishtake if I’m looking up mountain biking demos…
It’s the age old problem for the big networks – people go to them to socialise, not spend time looking at adverts.
As we enter what is going to be a very harsh period for ad spending, these big sites will have their business models and funding requirements tested to the limit as companies only look to advertise on tried & tested media outlets, whether on or offline.
I would not rule out a few casualties that are heavily geared towards venture funding and where the cash burn does not match the revenue stream.
A little bit of Stylish, plus a sprinkle of firebug for when they change ad structures, and you need never see an ad in Facebook, or nearly any other popular sit, again!
Hoax. This image is a hoax, and a poor one at that. Who ever sent it in should have used firebug or something rather than an image editor. If you look that “lying” link, it’s aligned lower than the rest of the links.
Allfacebook has an image showing the alignment. I posted the article as my website.
I guess that doesn’t show. Here’s the article:
http://www.allfacebook.com/2009/01/disgruntled-facebook-employee-probably-not/
Eric, the image isn’t a hoax.
If you look here, someone else captured it:
http://socialmediocrity.com/2009/01/05/lying-on-facebook/
The reason that image looks like that is because of the use of FastCapture screengrabber which – when you highlight something in its editor – slightly shifts the highlight out of line.
This comment was posted on the blog you cited, but they are yet to moderate it.
I’ll update the post if this is indeed accurate. The screenshot looked kind of suspicious though. The one you just linked to though is at least aligned properly.
Your right. Everything in the yellow spot is equally shifted. The blue border below and the flag icon to the right also show the shift. Why would a capture tool do that?
We poor Swiss people from the French-speaking area keep getting ads in German (http://climbtothestars.org/archives/2007/03/04/not-all-switzerland-speaks-german-dammit/) — I have my FB language set to English, btw.
I never understood why Facebook cannot target its advertisements better: it has more personal information about its users than most other sites. It knows users’ age, location, interests (groups), education and professional contacts (networks), among others, all voluntarily offered by the users. I suppose Facebook doesn’t know what its users have bought previously, but it holds a lot of data that other companies woud dearly like to be in possession. The advetisements seem to be shown in what it considers the local language(s) whichever the language the user chooses to set as default. In Brussels, the language of the advertisements oscillate between French and Flemish/Dutch.
The main problem which Facebook has in generating decent quality advertisements is that its users are not in a transactional frame of mind.
Because people aren’t about to purchase something they don’t click on adverts.