Facebook Audience Network - Help, optimization, implementation

A semi-official discussion thread for Facebook's ad network

[Evan Salamanca]

There is literally nothing on Google about help with FBAN and I didn't want July thread to get hijacked by FBAN discussion so here it is. Ask questions, share tips, talk about results, especially centered on the mobile web FBAN. And hopefully a future desktop version.

My question: when I use native ads, oftentimes they won't load and instead a big blank square likes to appear instead, even on desktop. Anyone know why this is?

[IanTurner]

Surely native ads are for use in Apps

[not2easy]

There was an article with a link to the Facebook notice regarding

Facebook has extended its Video Ads on the Audience Network to the desktop

a few weeks ago here: [webmasterworld.com...] that might be helpful. It was specifically about the addition of videos to the FBAN Ads (including desktop) but you may find the information there is useful.

[romerome]

I am running into the same problem. My ads are not appearing.

I have tried native and banner it doesn't seem to matter. I don't get a big blank box. I get nothing.

Do I need to install anything special to get the ads to run. Or to enqueue something in wordpress.

In the creation process it looks like interstitial are only for apps and native and banner can be used for apps or mobile web.

[james_09]

I'm stuck here and can't figure out how to send an ad request.

[postimg.org ]

The code is on my site, but it just display's a white space where the ad should be. How do I test it on my phone and how does FAN know it is me testing it and not another visitor?

[Bluejeans]

Implementation is about as confusing as it could possibly be.

You send an ad request by getting the code and placing it on the page. First, you must have an app id of course. Once the page is live you should quickly get a message from FB saying that they have received an ad request and are reviewing the domain for compliance with the FB policies. Shortly thereafter (in my case, about 4 hours) you should receive another notice saying that the domain has been approved and the ad is live.

[IanTurner]

Ad team were really quick at approving my placements.

[netmeg]

Ok all I can do is tell you what I did.

First - submit your domain. I think I got approval on the first one within an hour (but I already had a FB app for it for other purposes)

Next - forget banners. Took me forever just to see a test banner (and it was fugly and they didn't earn a cent) Just go native. At least to get started. You can always try a banner later if you really want.

Create your placement. There's two buttons - Get Code and Get HTML. The Get Code one is for apps only; you want Get HTML. In the Pop Up Window, you need to pick Direct or DFP (the DFP choice allows you to specify a passback) If you're not using DFP, Choose Direct. Then make sure you select Native instead of 300 x 250 or 320 x 50.

Now me, I put everything I can into Google Tag Manager for performance reasons, so I stripped out the CSS and served it from GTM. You don't need to do that. Just put the HTML ad code as is on your site. Then wait a bit, and look at it with your phone. (It probably helps if you're logged in to Facebook on your phone as well; theoretically they're supposed to start showing the ads whether you're logged in or not, but I don't know if that's effective yet)

That's how I did. You don't get 100% coverage; I set mine for 'maximize for fill' and I think I get around 50 to 70% depending on the site. Plus, since they only serve to mobile (at the moment) I had it set up so that if it *wasn't* a mobile device, I served AdSense - and that detection probably wasn't 100% accurate, because it never is.

Now that I know it works and it can make money, when I redesign my sites for next year, I'll see about creating a specific spot for the FAN ads.

[james_09]

Thanks Netmeg. I have followed your steps again and created a new ad placement and this time it seems to be working!

One thing I did do (not sure if it makes any difference) was to open up my site within the facebook app. i.e. I logged into the same facebook account on my phone and then went to my sites facebook page and followed a link to my site. This way my actual site opened within the facebook app and the ad loaded straight away.

Literally within minutes of doing this all the dashboard lights went green within FAN and my ads started serving.

[romerome]

Whats strange is under performance now it show that there are 6 requests and 4 filled requests. Its just placed on a few low traffic pages. But much more traffic than 6 page views. There should probably be around 1000 visits by now.

[netmeg]

There's a honeymoon period while it learns about your traffic patterns - I can't remember exactly how it was worded, but at one point I saw a message about it. It doesn't really start kicking in till you get some kind of time or visit threshold.

[Evan Salamanca]

Interesting. How long did it take you for it to be worth it? I've been experimenting with various placements for about a week but so far it's been a very low earner - less than ten dollars a day in most cases for a 16,000 mobile impressions per day website. Media.net has equaled it despite being low on the page and Adsense has murdered it.

[Broadway]

Why would FAN limit ads such as 300 X 250 to just showing on "mobile devices." That's a common unit size to use on desktop page formats too. Why the restriction?

[Evan Salamanca]

Probably just not ready to send it to the big time yet. Mobile is still technically in beta.

[james_09]

First (part) day with FAN yesterday. Request 3,600, filled 1,209, impressions 58. Fill rate of about 33%...

I have an single ad right at the very bottom of the page near the footer (below all the content and comments). I assume this is why the impressions are so low. I will try one out in a better position.

Fill rate is not looking great and the requests are about half of what I would have expected for the period of time it was live yesterday, but I will give it some time.

I will see how it goes over the next couple of weeks and report back.

[netmeg]

Your performance may have a lot to do with how much of your audience is on Facebook (and how they're profiled there) Facebook's advertising platform has a lot of targeting options that AdWords doesn't, which allows the FB advertisers to really drill down into whom they want to show their ads to - and whom they don't. Like AdSense, it's probably not a good match for every publisher. But I gave it a month or two of testing before I decided to keep it (and it started out with some pretty mediocre numbers)

[Evan Salamanca]

did banners ever start really performing for you or just the native ads? I like the look of banners but if they are non performers I don't want to mess with them...

[netmeg]

Nope, just the native ads. I only ran banners for a couple weeks. Might try them again later.

[kindle44]

Question: Where do you go to initiate the process? i'm now hearing about FAN. I would certainly like to give it a try.

[romerome]

My fill rate was not too bad. About 75% for the last two days. But the requests were far less than 1 percent of what they should be. I moved the ad to a much lower placement near the bottom of the page to see if things improve.

I'm unsure why the requests are so low. Some of the people are coming directly from facebook so I know that is not the issue. And the cache has been flushed.

I hope its just facebook testing and not an implementation error.

[netmeg]

Question: Where do you go to initiate the process? i'm now hearing about FAN. I would certainly like to give it a try.

[developers.facebook.com...]

[kindle44]

Thanks.... netmeg

[james_09]

As facebook ads only show on mobile websites I assume screen width is what determines if the ad shows up?
If so does anyone know the maximum screen width that facebook ads will display?

[yoyo8]

Currently I am using Adsense via dfp and on mobile view, have a mobile leaderboard at top, above the fold, and 2 300x250 medium rectangules spaced out some screen swipes below. I feel like for mobile view 3 ads is plenty. If I were to enable fan, where should it be displayed? I'm used to displaying ads on desktop but am confused about mobile ad displays.

[romerome]

Weird. My impressions for FAN are still far less than 1 percent of my pageviews. I moved the ad lower down in the site figuring I would let it sit there and see if things worked themselves out (I wanted to use that ad spot for another ad). But now 5 days in my impressions are still way under 1 percent. And moving down the ad caused impressions to drop. So I guess for me FAN is just pegged at showing for .0001 of my pageviews. Thinking about creating a new app and trying again. Also my fill rate has been falling as well.

[james_09]

My ad requests are now roughly equal to my mobile page views - so that seems to be working okay for me.

My fill rate has been increasing each day, all be it very slowly and it's still very low - 38% for Sunday.

My biggest issue seems to be that of the ads which are filled, only about 30% of those results in an impression. I've moved the ad near the top of the content so perhaps users are scrolling down before it loads.

The end result is just over 10% of my ad requests are actually resulting in an impression.

What's annoying is my CPM is actually beating Adsense by quite a lot. If I could just get the fill rate and impressions higher....

[netmeg]

FWIW I just got my first payment notification yesterday, so it looks like they pay on or about the 20th of the month for earnings through the previous month (as long as you make the $100 minimum) and it's account-wide, not site-wide. So that's good. Pretty close to AdSense on that score.

(As a contrast, I actually do pretty well with Disqus' native ads with comments on my sites, but 1) they only pay for each site as each site makes the minimum, not the overall account, and 2) they pay in NINETY DAYS which is ridiculous)

[avalon37]

Yes payments are usually the 3rd Tuesday of each month. Another really cool option they offer is a 25% credit incentive. So let's say you earned $100 exactly in July; In August you could get $125 in Facebook ads credits. So if you manage other people's accounts it's really $125 for making $100. Assuming you are fronting the money for them and billing on actuals + management fee.

[ubound]

Just signed up and got approved today. Implementation went smoothly for me, but I don't have video ads option. I only have banner, native and interstitial options. How do you get video ads? Or is it available only for some accounts and not for all?

[james_09]

Okay so it's been just over a month for me now with a single Facebook native ad live.

Results:- 240k requests, 85k filled, 22.5k impressions, 155 clicks and $14 earnings.

For my site FAN hasn't worked out. I think the most frustrating thing is that less than 10% of my ad requests actually resulted in an impression.