20 unpleasant features of Facebook as an advertising platform

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Access to the cabinet, pixel and audiences

Access to the client’s advertising account can be obtained in 3 ways: through adding to friends, then through setting up the role and through Business Manager. This is not so obvious, so we have compiled instructions.

When a client comes to us who has already independently placed an advertisement on Facebook, as a rule, he already has a page, an advertising office and a pixel (that is, the code that needs to be placed on the site to collect the audience and track events). For our convenience, we make ourselves administrative access to customer data and work through the Business Manager. But if a client created a pixel from a personal page, and not from an organization’s page, then access to it is impossible.

In this case, there are 2 options: either create a new pixel, or do not use targeting by site visitors in advertising.

To facilitate work with multiple accounts, it is recommended to create a Business Manager. It allows you to automate the management of multiple advertising accounts. You only need to add pages and advertising accounts of clients and you can run ads.

However, in Business Manager there is a limitation, you can add only 3 pages. Therefore, we create on the client side Business Manager, in order to gain access to the pixel and the audience of the advertising office.

Configure Audiences

Configuring an audience is also sometimes difficult. It takes hours to pick up combinations of targeting, so that the right option comes up in the recommended ones. Based on which algorithms the recommended targeting is selected, one Facebook knows.

It is better to create audiences from scratch through the Audiences section. As when copying ad groups of the same type, if you need to expand the audience and keep it as new, problems arise. The audience may not be saved as new and not displayed in the general list of audiences.

Facebook slips overseas targeting in English in recommended. Foreigners also get into Russian-language targeting, so if your audience is only Russian, make a restriction on targeting the page language.

Perhaps part of the foreign audience is the target audience, but Facebook responds to this ambiguously. So do not be surprised if in the statistics after the launch of the advertising campaign you will see foreigners.

Passage of moderation

Another pain is the moderation of ads. Facebook has its own standards of political correctness. If Facebook suspects discrimination on any grounds, the ads will not be moderated. If you think your ad has been blocked by mistake, you can appeal the decision. For example, you may be banned if you advertise in the advertisement on the human body, as in the advertisement of fitness clubs. If the subject matter of the ads raises doubts about moderation, carefully read Facebook's requirements before placing an advertisement.

A common problem when placing ads - Facebook does not show ads due to the fact that there is too much text on the banner ad. According to the rules, the text should occupy no more than 20% of the image. To save time, initially check banners in the built-in Facebook service.

And in the future, if you need to place more text, use a slide show format; there are no such strict requirements for this format.

Advertising launch

Sometimes it happens that after the launch of an advertising campaign, impressions do not start. In this case, you need to go through the settings and check: whether the account, ad or ad group is active, the launch date is correct, the cost limit or advertising period is not exceeded, whether the ad is moderated. If everything is correct, then it remains only to wait or try to expand the audience, perhaps narrowing targeting is set.

There are situations when you run an ad and have already started showing, but suddenly everything stopped for no apparent reason. There may be many reasons, but the first thing you need to check is whether you have lost access to the Facebook page. Sometimes this happens for new pages that have no activity yet. The page simply goes into “unpublished” mode. This may also occur for pages that you have been driving for a long time; in this case, you can only refer to the glitch of the Facebook advertising account.

Colleagues agree that working in a regularly updated interface is inconvenient. Opportunities for settings and analytics in Facebook are great, while regularly updating the interface is not good. For example, the latest update - Ads Manager received the Power Editor interface, which allows you to automate work during a massive change.

Sometimes it may be necessary to transfer advertising campaigns from one advertising account to another. For this, the Facebook advertising account has a built-in “Export and Import” function. We unload the csv data file and load it into another advertising cabinet.

Pay advertising and strange write-offs

Before placing an advertisement, you must specify the method of payment and the card from where the money will be credited at the end of the period It is better not to link temporary cards or Sberbank cards, in some cases, Facebook does not even allow this. Account can be blocked.

If you run several advertising accounts and connect your card to pay for advertising for one client, and then the client account is in the negative - this is a risk for all accounts. It is better not to allow this situation.

On Facebook, strange debits sometimes occur, even with campaigns turned off. Information about the write-off will be reflected in the statistics. If you notice something like this, then check the settings of the advertising account for connecting strange functions, contact Facebook technical support, check the connection of the alert function via SMS. In the event that there are a lot of charges and you cannot figure them out yet, contact the bank to block the card.

Frequent phenomenon is traffic clicking by bots. In this case, in the statistics, you can see visits from different countries and sessions lasting 0.01 seconds. So do not be surprised if you notice such statistics in the advertising office, this happens in all advertising systems. Turning to the staff of Facebook, we heard confirmation that in this case, the money in your account is returned.

When setting up automatic rules for an ad group, you may encounter a problem that the rule is not saved or multiple duplicates are created. Check the rules you create before including your ad campaign. Otherwise, you can accidentally drag the budget. However, there are situations when the rules simply disappear from the list and do not insure against it.

Account lock

Facebook can block an advertising account without explanation. This may be due to the fact that you violated the rules of advertising, someone complained about your advertising, etc. In this case, you can return your account by providing information, but unfortunately it will be empty, all ads will be deleted and you will have to start posting advertising campaigns again.

Facebook can catch you in suspicious activity, if you log into your account from different browsers or your avatar is suspicious that you are not a real person. Most often, he sends a confirmation code to the phone number or asks to upload a photo where the face is clearly visible. Therefore, it is recommended that you place a photo and full name on the admin page of the advertising cabinet so that it matches your passport data.

Careful about creating an advertising account, because the data can no longer be changed. These include currency, country, and time zone. In particular, if you do not specify a time zone, then the standard Pacific time will be entered. As a result, advertising will run 12 hours later.

There is almost no technical support on Facebook. There is a form for questions, but you need to spend time to find it in the large help. But if you are lucky and you have found it, it is better to write in English and in several forms at once. We had a blocking account, where simple advertising was not allowed. Turning into one of the forms, we were lucky. An employee of foreign support answered, restored access and even called (the number was defined as Dublin), telling in broken English what happened to the account.

 

And yet we love

Despite the fact that when working with Facebook, there are problems that lead to distraction, it is still interesting to work with him.

Every month in the advertising office there are new chips, an increasing number of formats for advertising. Here is the largest number of targeting, so you can reach any audience for advertising. As well as the largest selection of targets for advertising campaigns.

When other advertising channels just launch something new, Facebook already has it. One of the most vivid examples of dynamic remarketing, by the way, we have developed a special module for it.

When working with Facebook and Instagram advertising tools, there are difficulties, there are a lot of tools, they appeared at different times and are targeted at different advertisers. In general, as an agency, we get the impression that Facebook is not seeking to cooperate more with small businesses and individuals and not to cooperate with agencies at all.

And yet, if you find it difficult to start working on Facebook, you are afraid that you will not get the expected result and spend the budget in vain, please contact us. Fill out the form below and get a personal offer.

This article was translated automatically. We are working over improving the translation.

Please send your questions about the article to info@intervolga.ru