This Man’s $600,000 Facebook Disaster Is a Warning for All Small Businesses
February 22nd, 2014I figured this out after blowing only $10 on Facebook advertising. It’s incredible that companies are wasting tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars on this breathtaking scam.
Via: Business Insider:
Recently, however, Brar has fallen out of love with Facebook. He discovered — as Business Insider reported recently — that his Facebook fanbase was becoming polluted with thousands of fake likes from bogus accounts. He can no longer tell the difference between his real fans and the fake ones. Many appear fake because the users have so few friends, are based in developing countries, or have generic profile pictures.
At one point, he had a budget of more than $600,000 for Facebook ad campaigns, he tells us. Now he believes those ads were a waste of time.
Facebook declined multiple requests for comment on this story.
Brar’s take is a cautionary one because Facebook has 25 million small businesses using its platform for one marketing purpose or another. Many of them are not sophisticated advertisers — they are simply plugging a credit card number into the system and hoping for the best. This is what can happen if you don’t pay careful attention to contract language, or the live, real-time results your campaigns on Facebook are having.
Related: Company Finds Facebook Advertising Results in Clickthroughs That Are 80% Bots
I agree with this article.
When I produced and arranged a song about Edward Snowden in early July of last year, I paid out about 600 bucks for advertising across the web. (Google, FaceBook, Twitter etc.)
I found it to be a waste of money.
In fact, at one point, (Late December) after I cancelled my advertising, the FaceBook page was taken down. When I contacted FaceBook, they completely ignored me.
However, when I contacted the advertising department and asked how I could advertise when my FaceBook account was taken down without explanation, it was up and running again in less than 4 hours.
https://www.facebook.com/everycall.youmake
Calm
But, even after they put the FaceBook page back up, I refused to advertise anymore.
Calm
I think these same click farms are active on reddit–
http://www.redditblog.com/2011/06/which-cities-countries-have-most-reddit.html
Note the huge amount of traffic from Gabon
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/reddit.com
Pakistan, India
If there is sketchy stuff going on on facebook and twitter, then why not reddit?
Mentioning this here because I could see you doing further research and breaking this story. I don’t know where else to look for info.