Google Ads, Live Sports, Amazon Ads and In-Game Product Placement all have one thing in common – superiority to Facebook Ads.
Why you may ask? Speaking from experience, I do not trust Facebook Ads. We stopped running Facebook Ads for CEORater in Q1’18. We never went “all in”. We tested a series of small ads – micro campaigns – for the better part of a year. There is no better word than “fraudulent” to describe my initial reaction to the process.
I simply did not believe that the people who “liked” our Ads had a genuine interest in what we were doing at CEORater. I doubt that most of the people who “liked” our campaigns gave a darn about over-sized CEO compensation packages nor corporate governance (our subject matter). I won’t describe “why”, suffice to say there were sufficient red flags. Thus, when I see headlines about how Facebook is a wonderful Ad platform, I can’t help but think those who subscribe to the theory haven’t done their homework. Try following a Facebook Ad campaign start to finish at a granular level. See for yourself.
We must perform due diligence as advertising spend increasingly moves online and goes mobile. Don’t accept reported numbers as gospel. It’s OK to ask: “How much noise is on your platform? How do you verify account authenticity? Who’s accountable for data cleansing and platform integrity?” “What you’re telling me doesn’t reconcile with what I see within my own family from a usage standpoint…” Time for large clients to hold both Facebook’s and Ad agencies’ feet to the fire.
For the record, we don’t own nor are we short Facebook shares.