Did Facebook Pull a Bait and Switch?

I was putting up Facebook social ads for two of my clients last week, and a funny thing began to happen, something that I had never noticed before. For the first client's ad, I picked the criteria including the amount to pay per day for the ad and my bid or price that we'd budgeted to pay for the ad.

When calculating the bid, I often pick 5 cents over the minimum bid that Facebook suggests. This seems to work well and offers up a good number of possible click throughs.

After the ad was in process, I realized I needed to make a small change so I went into the ad and edited something. Then I went to approve the change and noticed something strange:

Facebook had automatically changed the bid price range - it had now increased. If I hadn't noticed that, I would have underbid on the ad.

When I realized I could not change the new price back to the original, I finally had to entirely delete the ad and start from scratch. Once the ad was back in the second time, the price came back up as the original one so I entered my original bid and completed the ad process.

For my second client, I set up the ad, and it wasn't until the ad run ended, and I went in to retrieve the stats for the client, that I noticed the ad didn't actually run for the four days before Valentine's Day as I had submitted it.

Even though we were only charged $1.36 for the ad run, it was bad thing because the client was looking for the ad to run during a specific time frame. How could this have happened?

Then I remembered what had happened to me before with the first client's ad. Had I gone back in to change anything? I couldn't recall. Going back to change or tweak an ad mid-process was a common thing for me to do as I worked to hone and refine the effectiveness of the ad. I had never encountered Facebook increasing the suggested bid amount with any of those changes. And I've submitted many of these ads to Facebook.

Upon further investigation, I did find that Facebook definitely increased the bid on the ad so that the original bid I had put in was too low to sustain the ad beyond the first day. The ad simply didn't get placement over the next three days. I must have made a change and then didn't think to check for a price increase.

To try to get to the bottom of this price increase thing, I went into Facebook today and put together another ad. It was then that I noticed that Facebook now has a new Advanced Pricing Option link. Interesting because this now HIDES the fact that the price increases while you are on the first submissions page.

Behind that link are the Pricing options that used to be totally visible only last week.

Here's are the Advanced Pricing Options when you click on the link:

The automatic pricing Facebook chose for me - another brand new feature - was 5 cents above the minimum which is what I usually choose anyway so I was fine with it.

Note that I set an ad run from Feb 19 to Feb 25.

I then went to approve the ad. Note that it showed the correct dates:

But then decided to go back and tweak the copy.

When I went to approve the add again, here's how Facebook surreptitiously switched the dates:

Because I changed the ad copy and not the dates, normally I would have NEVER noticed this subtle change before placing the order, but I did notice it, took the screen shot above, then decided to Place the Order anyway.

My intention was to go back after I submitted the ad and it was approved to fix the date run to see what would happen to the rest of my ad criteria that I had selected.

I returned to my Ad manager and so far I could see I had bid 73 cents (that was on the range Facebook had given me of 68-78 cents). The run dates still said Ongoing.

I went in and changed Ongoing back to Feb 25. Then I decided to narrow my target a little and added a few key words. The potential reach was reduced from 8 million to about 170,000.

 

Out of curiosity, I opened up the Advanced Pricing Options link. Remember that this section used to be totally visible on the submissions form.

Lo and behold, the bid had changed on me from 68 - 78 cents to 75 - 86 cents so suddenly my bid of 73 cents - which was originally recommended to me by Facebook and was fine with me - was now below the minimum bid.

Facebook had changed the pricing dynamically because of something I did but If I did not notice this, I would have had another ad fail.

So what do you think Facebook is up to here? Counting on us not to notice when they switch ad run dates to Continuous or when they up the bidding price on us without making it obvious? What are they thinking?

Comments

[Terry]

Wow! Now I'm afraid to experiment with FB ads on my jobhunt campaign--at least until this issue is resolved. Thanks for pointing it out!

[deborah]

Thanks for letting us know!

[Mary LaFever]

Yes, thanks for the expertly detailed saga; interesting. Any reason to let them know that you know or are wondering? or would that make it worse......am glad to have the alert, anyway.

[Nik Hewitt]

Well spotted! And awesome heads-up, thanks Aliza. No one moves the goal posts like Facebook, but it's a poor show when they move them while you're not looking. Would *love* to hear their reasoning for this one...

[Aliza Sherman]

I think the lesson is to be very very diligent. I can't say this will stop me from using Facebook social ads because of their proven power, however, you have to watch your campaigns - even while you are submitting them - like a hawk.

[Susan @ New Niche Finder]

Facebook is an expert in bait and switch. Think offering a safe environment and then changing privacy policies. It won't stop me from advertising there because that's where my peeps are but it certainly pays to be extremely cautious when dealing with them.

[Julie Pollock]

I've had a problem this past week as an unwitting sender of an ad on Weight Loss. A link came to me from a FB friend and then was sent to my whole friends list under my name...as if I was recommending a quick-weight loss diet plan. Some people thought I did send it. One asked that I remove them from my list. I reported it to FB. Not sure yet if it's turned off but this nearly made me close my account! Your problem is in the same timeframe...insidious!

[Kay]

This makes me think of the same sort of thing using AdWords on Google. The tutorial by the Chief Economist at Google is clear, simple and opened my eyes to why I do not want to do this on a small biz site for my friend. Who knew?!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRx7AMb6rZ0

[Aliza Sherman]

I've just submitted a piece to Web Worker Daily outlining the findings on this post and then an ADDENDUM that came up today, believe it or not. That should go up sometime Monday.

[hydroxycut]

The exercise is undoubtedly the best and most healthy way to weight loss and fat, but over time have developed products that help make this more effectively and expeditiously, it is to maintain a balanced diet, a healthy eating and daily exercise, excellent topic.

[hormone imbalance]

Normally there are such problems with Facebook?, it is worrying ...

[wench costume]

Tsktsk.. I think you must address this to the FB authorities.

[Costa Rica Homes For Sale liberia]

I think facebook is a great social bookmark that crosses borders and unites millions of people around the world, we must use a tool to convey good wishes for peace and prosperity

[I Need Money Desperately]

I think you must directly address this problem to facebook so that if there really are some bugs, they could immediately fix it. :)

[louis]

I’m hoping that we’ll end up with a slew of prototyped ideas and a bunch of happy people. I’m sure there’ll be a lot more hard work until we can turn those embryonic proofs of concept into living

[Richard Fairfull]

Thanks for the great info and providing the forum. I have noticed similar behavior. Also observed that pricing varies with CTR. CTR goes up, bid price goes down and vice versa. Your goal is to place ad, monitor for a few hours as clicks come in. If CTR is favorable and auto bid price will trend down. If your are using Google Tracking code and opt in's are high auto bid price will decrease further. FB will automatically lower the bid.

-Rich Fairfull
RichFairfull.com