Is Facebook's "Promote" feature overpriced?

They aren't overpriced, but they are ineffecient if not used properly. If you use http://blog.wishpond.com/post/56441926016/how-to-use-facebook-promoted-posts without targeting, then you will be spending money on advertising to people who aren't interested in your business/products. To create Promoted Posts that are cost-effective and target people who are interested in your business/products, take advantage of the new targeting options. These can be accessed in the "Boost Post" pop-up menu by setting "Audience" to "People you choose through targeting": Or if you want more flexibility you can promoted your posts in the News Feed using the normal Facebook Ads creator or http://blog.wishpond.com/post/63484021831/how-to-create-a-targeted-facebook-ad-audience-using.

Here's an update: I promoted a post to receive 12,000 impressions over a span of 3 days costing $15.00. Here's my results: The first thing you'll notice is that I didn't receive 12,000 impressions as promised, only 3,934. This gives me a whopping cost of $3.81 per 1000 impressions. I'm basically in the same sucker category as the advertisers that were paying Yahoo for banner ads during the dot com boom.  Thanks Zuck. Secondly, Facebook isn't selling more impressions with your fan base, it's selling more time with your fan base. Reason is once the 3 days were up, the promotion finished. This is grossly misleading as if you refer to what I was solicited, you will see no mention of time with my audience being offered (see below). Should you use Facebook's Promote feature? I'm going to put off using Facebook's promote feature until they iron out these kinks. If Facebook wants to improve this feature, they need to get pricing more in line with what you are actually receive. I know the 12,000 impressions was just an estimate but to receive a quarter of that is unacceptable. A fairer price for me to pay is $1.25 per 1000, so in this case I would have only paid $4.91 and if I did get the 12,000 impressions I would pay the full $15. Conclusion Facebook's promote feature is not only overpriced but it is misleading about what it is selling. Secondly, I didn't receive more engagement than I normally would (when I don't pay to promote). Most of my posts receive between 40 and 200 Likes, the post I promoted received 35.  This may have something to do with Facebook's algorithm giving less weight to a post with an external link or it just may not be something people liked.

Beware of so-called "optimized CPM" bidding. They tried to charge me a $330 CPM once on a $10 budget. They know that advertisers who choose optimized CPM are probably new to the game and can be taken for more money. In my opinion, CPC advertising is what makes online advertising great. You only pay for performance, you learn invaluable information about your market just by having run the campaign and its satisfying to see how quickly your ads can win at auction, the bid-price spread, how various creative and targeting performed over others, all that fun stuff.

It all depends on what the goal of your business on Facebook ... Getting new fans or fans take advantage of you already have to sell more to them? As a seller I think the latter. The ads (traditional left) and promoted publications have different objectives. The first ads are the best way to publicize your business, let people know you exist. The  promoted publications give visibility to a message that runs the risk of being lost in the wall of your fans for the many friends who are (usually) and the large number of pages that follow. So the cost of promoting a publication is directly related to: "how many of your fans want to get a specific message and stay visible for 3 days" CONCLUSION: The price is not out of control, as it serves a different function of the ads. While the target segment can save you money then to communicate with your fans. Sorry for the wording, I'm using the Google translator;). I'm Argentine and I do not speak English very well :)

In my test of the new "post promote" on I spent $15 and got twice the exposure as normal (from 7% to 13%).  I didn't look at fans reached but the viral affect getting my post in front of new people who haven't liked my page.  That number was 392 so it cost about $.04 to get in front of those folks.  But looking further I only got a couple more "likes" out of it, no comments or shares so to me it's a lot more expensive than FB paid ads.  I'll probably try it a couple more times to test further.