Facebook reported fake numbers to advertisers

I keep warning small time (ie most) FB page owners who advertise on FB to be very very careful as they are being subjected to a beefed up version of the psychological manipulation that regular users face as they, not the regular users, are the main customers.

Facebooks corporate incentive is to get you to FEEL like your getting good value out of advertising on Facebook and to get you addicted to doing it.

Not to actually deliver results.

So don't trust any metric they show you, because even if its not a total fabrication it's still presented in a way to deceive you to think its better than it is.

Always monitor your ROI and always calculate it using your truly end goal (sales, or in the case of civil society some sort engagement off Facebook that's tightly bound to you mission). Likes, shares, comments and reach should NEVER be the goal. Even if FBs interface is trying to convince you otherwise.

After spending $~25 on ads and getting absolutely no conversion, I can assure you Facebook did a terrible job at making me feel like I got any value.

I spent a few hundred dollars, in $25 increments. I ran different ad copy, different visuals, different times of day.

The difference in effectiveness between different visuals and ad copy ranged from "no one clicked this" to "10% conversion after hitting my landing page."

For the right audience, with the right campaign, FB ads do work.

But you have to play around, and what does work might not be intuitive.

Also I found out that the ad copy that worked on FB didn't work on Reddit, and vis versa.