I recently had something very confusing and disconcerting happen to me while I was setting up Facebook social ads for two different clients. I carefully documented and illustrated what I found on my previous post, however, here's a summary:
1. Facebook has a new interface for their ads submission page, and they hide the details to the "suggested bid" for the ad and other pricing detais that they now call "Advanced Pricing." You have to click on Advanced Pricing to access details that used to be immediately and easily viewable.
2. Unbeknownst to me, Facebook changed the ad run dates on one of the ads I was placing "automatically" when I went in to edit my ad. My originally end date (four days hence) was surreptitiously removed and replaced with Ongoing. If I hadn't caught that error in time, the ad would have kept running - and racking up a bill - for potentially days or weeks until I went in to check final results of the ad campaign.
3. Unbeknownst to me, when I went back to edit the keywords in one of the ads, the suggested bid price went up. There was no warning, no message that I needed to increase my bid, nothing. For one of my clients, I didn't notice this change had happened. When I went to check the ad results after the ad run was over, I discovered that the ad stopped running after the second day because my original bid was no longer sufficient to gain placement on Facebook. Ad placement on Facebook is an auction where you bid for placement. If you don't bid enough, the ad placement dwindles down to nothing. And the original bid that was suddenly too small was what Facebook had auto-selected for me when I first submitted the ad.
At first I thought that maybe I had missed an announcement or some new rules published without fanfare by Facebook, but I couldn't find anything. Then I went to view results for another ad run and noticed a link to the left of my Facebook Ad Manager page:What happens when I choose Edit Ad?Maybe the mystery to the secret switching of dates and suggested bids was behind that link, I thought. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. The help page read
When you choose to edit an ad, you'll be taken to the ad creation page with the ad creative, targeting, scheduling and payments fields pre-populated with your existing ad settings. The changes you make will replace your existing ad. Once you submit your changes, your ad will stop running until the new version has been approved by the Facebook Ads Team. Ad edits cannot be undone. If you'd like to change your ad back to a previous version, you'll need to edit it again and make the desired changes.
No explanation of the switcheroo to Ongoing on the ad run dates every time I edited. No explanation of the cost of the ad - or suggested bid - being raised when I edited keywords.
But Look! That's Not All.
I thought that was the whole story until I then reviewed my bid and the suggested bid range I was originally given when I placed the ad. My bid for another ad that had already been running for a few days was suddenly higher than the suggested bid range meaning that I was bidding over the maximum suggested bid.
How could this be possible? Somehow, during the last 24 hours, Facebook lowered their suggested bid price on me so I was now overpaying for the ad. This is what I saw on the ad submission page when I submitted it to Facebook.
Note the part under CPC bid:
This is what I saw when I checked on the ad stats. Note the part under CPC bid:How did my bid change? I'd like to give Facebook the benefit of the doubt, but this is concerning me. Does anyone have a good explanation for this? Is Facebook really tricking users into paying more or in the case of the suggested bid changing, losing their ad placements? This doesn't make any sense.
The former is definitely a way for Facebook to line their pockets - kind of like how video stores make their profits from late fees versus rental fees - that "hidden" cost. But the latter seems counter intuitive - why make it less likely that someone's ad shows up? Wouldn't that mean less money? Someone please explain Facebook's logic to me.
ADDENDUM FROM TODAY: Was doing a workshop on Facebook Social Ads today for my team and Facebook did it AGAIN. Switched the cost of the bid lower than what I had bid and then when I lowered my bid slightly so I wasn't overspending, Facebook then upped it again before I could even submit the ad. If I hadn't have been teaching the team to look out for this very thing, I wouldn't have noticed. AGAIN.
What kind of weirdness have you been experiencing lately with your Facebook ads, if any?