Facebook Ads: Are the fans real?

We all are aware of how Facebook has changed the dynamics of the digital world. Not only has it over taken conventional websites but also changed the whole business model for online ads. We have often come across success stories of brands and people using Facebook Ads.

In fact all the digital marketers & Social Media experts have used Facebook ads for their brands at one time or the other. All of them will even agree that the CPC's and CTR's for Facebook ads has worked wonders.

But before you guys come to any conclusion, just read this case. You're in for a surprise.

Case: Facebook Ads: Are the fans real?

What I did?

I created three facebook pages and ran ads for each of them till I got 1000 fans on each of these pages. I used proper targeting with respect to demographics, brand, age etc. I was happy with my Ad Campaign performance, CPC, CTR and the number of clicks

Now was the time for a reality check, I clicked on 'Use Facebook as Page' option.

I Switched to one of my pages and clicked on 'Home' Button. It took me to the wall of my page and on the right hand it showed 'Recommended pages'. I did this for each of the three pages and what I saw was shocking.

What I saw?

So, the above image explains this - out of 1000 fans that came via ads on my page, more than 700 people like other pages too. Interestingly these are the pages or brands that had run a Facebook Ad campaign at some point of time and this made me doubt the credibility of Facebook fans that come via Facebook Ads. I further researched and clicked randomly on some of the fan profiles who had liked my pages.

The result showed that each of these fans liked more than 1000-2000 facebook pages. Some of the profiles hardly shared any information about them. Some showed fake information like 'President at Facebook', 'Chief Officer at Google' etc.

There were even some fake profiles which had fake friends. See the list of the Friends for this profile -

Hard to believe, isn't it?

FYI, this is not the first time I have used Facebook Ads. I have been using Facebook Ads for more than 15 brands in last two years. But this was the first time I decided to dig deep.

I don't know what to conclude from the above data. It can be -

a) The fans coming from the ads are fake.

b) Facebook might be paying users to 'Like' Pages via these ads. That surely justifies why a user will like more than 1000-2000 Facebook pages. This is not hard to believe because earlier this year Facebook had admitted to hiring a ‘dirty tricks’ PR firm to smear Google and promote fears that it compromised users’ privacy.

c) The fans are genuine and we are just fooled by randomness.

Whatever it is, I advice you to do a Reality Check for your brands if you have or are running Facebook Ads.

Photo courtesy Mark Lyken