Home › Paid Search Venues

Facebook Advertising

Here are some fun facts about Facebook. According to their own Press Room page (which is brimming with delicious statistics), Facebook has 400 million unique users, 50% of whom log in at least once a day. More than 35 million users update their statuses each day. More than 3 BILLION photos are uploaded to the site each month. More than 1.5 million local businesses have active pages and more than 20 million people become fans of these pages each DAY. This is a very engaged audience, so chances are if you target your ads appropriately, you'll get a good response. As such, I think Facebook makes sense for small local and niche advertisers such as wedding photographers or local retail stores.

I'm still on the fence about B2B marketing on Facebook. It may not be the best outlet for that - at least not yet.

Here are a few more stats about user engagement. The average user:

  • spends nearly an hour per day on Facebook
  • clicks the Like button on 9 pieces of content each month
  • writes 25 comments on Facebook content each month

Facebook's online advertising FAQ and advertising guidelines contain all the information you need about launching a campaign, but I've pulled out the bottom line info here. Read the Facebook Advertising FAQ if you need more details.

Audience Reach

  • 350,000,000 active users

    • Ad Targeting

    • Location
    • Age
    • Sex
    • Keywords
    • Education
    • Workplace
    • Relationship Status
    • Relationship Interests
    • Languages

    Ad Specs

    • Title = 25 characters
    • Body = 135 characters
    • Image (optiional) = 110x84

      Here is a sample ad:

      Payment Details

      • Pay for Impressions or Pay for Clicks
      • Pay by credit card or co-branded debit card (Visa, Mastercard, Amex, etc.)
      • Facebook assigns each advertiser a daily spend limit up to $1000 based on successful credit card payments. You cannot increase this spend limit yourself - it's adjusted automatically by Facebook
      • Facebook charges your credit card once per day, but reserves the right to charge more often
      • The minimum CPC on Facebook is .01
      • The minimum daily budget for CPC and CPM is $1.00 USD. In addition, your budget must be at least 2x the CPC or CPM you have specified.

      Here's a link to Facebook's Advertising Guidelines. Nothing surprising here. In summary:

      • Advertisers cannot create or manage multiple Facebook accounts for advertising purposes unless given permission by Facebook to do so. (this is probably to avoid double serving of ads)
      • Landing pages cannot generate a pop-up or pop under
      • Landing pages cannot prevent people from leaving (e.g., a disabled "back" button, or false browser shut down)
      • Ads must directly relate to the content on the landing page (hmmm, now that sounds familiar)
      • Not allowed: tobacco products, ammunition, firearms, paintball guns, bb guns or weapons, gambling, pyramid schemes or "scams", contests/sweepstakes (without permission from Facebook), adult content, adult friend finders, adult toys, videos or adult products, uncertified pharmaceutical products (whatever THAT means), spy cames/surveillance eqiupment. There's more - read it here.
      • The destination URL for the ad must link to a page that clearly and accurately offers the exact deal the ad has displayed.
      • Ads cannot include excessive capitalization (such as "FREE") or incorrect capitalization (such as capitalizing the first letter of every word in a sentence).
      • Ads cannot contain repeated and unnecessary punctuation (such as "Buy now!!!").
      • Exclamation points cannot be used in the title of any ad.