The Power Editor from Facebook is, lets face it, way behind its time. But its here now, and it gives us all just another way to upload ads to Facebook.

You can test the tool out here. Unfortunately, its only usable with Google Chrome, so those using Firefox or other browsers will have to make the switch. You will also need to change some privacy settings in your Account Settings to use a secure connection with Facebook (https://). That can cause issues with outside ad uploaders supported by the Facebook Ads API, so be aware that you may have to switch back if you use anything else to upload ads.

I like this tool as it can make uploading ads very simple by using Excel. That’s pretty powerful. To get a template, just export one of your current campaigns, delete the data and fill it in with your own ads. Each ad goes on its own line. Leave the campaign name column blank to insert the ads into a new campaign. This brings up one issue though, not being able to submit multiple ads to multiple campaigns. So you will have to break up your ad uploading to do this.

Another neat feature is the storage of all your ad images. You can select those images in the platform and directly create new ads without having to upload them again.

The tool also handles bidding changes a little better than the standard ad platform. Now you can update all your ads in one campaign without running into limitations and oddities you may have hit upon before.

It also brings back the return of the impression column. Frequency was a great addition to the original ad platform, but having to multiply frequency * reach to figure out my overall impressions made me feel like Facebook was just trying to troll me.

So, overall its a welcome addition to those that want a free ad uploader, but by no means is it a game changer. There are affordable, fantastic ad uploaders that just know how to do it better.  You can check out the Power Editor by finding the link on the left sidebar of your Facebook Ads Manager page.

I know… I know. I’ve been really slow on pushing these out. I’m going to do my hardest to push more of these posts out and catch up this week. I’ve been caught in the middle of some personal drama and tons of business opportunities, so I’m a bit behind on the blog here. I apologize to all my readers for that! All I can ask is that I hope you forgive me, and hope these types of posts help you out.

So, anyways, today I’ve picked out an offer that’s been doing really strong. The gaming vertical is one that will always be strong as its so prevalent in today’s entertainment industry. With the advancements of browser based gaming and graphics technology, rather than sit and download a 10 GB game, we can just load them up in Firefox and play them right there. Battlestar Galactica is one of those games. Let’s get into it, shall we!

The Offer

Before you go balls to the walls on promoting something, it’s always a good idea to know a little more about what exactly you are affiliate marketing here. In this case, it is a game based off an original sci-fi television series. Wikipedia it up or go out and buy the blu-rays because BSG FRACKING ROCKS! Sorry… I let my fanboy out. The landing page is pretty big which might make it awkward for direct linking on PPV (AffPortal has got a great tool for previewing landing pages and offer pages). Plus, it’s got very limited info, so you’ll probably only get conversions on people looking to already play it, yet haven’t gotten an account, if you just direct link it.

The offer page on this guy might differ from network to network. I’ve seen some with no captcha like above, while others have captchas. That might be an offer-side action, though. You can bet your ass, though, that a non-captcha landing page would convert better.

Research

Have you wiki’d Battlestar Galactica, yet? Get on it. That will help you know a little more about the series. Obviously, targeting fans of the series is going to equal money, but you’ve also got a whole slew of other people you can target. In any case, we’re still going to be using a Quantcast to do a little more demographic and psychographic research

So, you can see, I put in two domains in Quantcast. The first site is BigPoint.com. BigPoint are the publishers of BSG Online. I also threw in BattlestarWiki.org. This site is actually quantified which means you get a real in-depth look at the traffic information there. So what that picture tells is is that we have a bunch of unemployed white and Asian nerds that are 18 – 34 years old, that live in their parents basements because they don’t have a job that pays enough money to repay the debt on their undergraduate and graduate school student loans. Or so it seems. Whether or not the income information is 100% accurate or not isn’t too important, as its pretty safe to assume high anyone that watches and still follows the series even after its end, is a total fracking nerd. That’s going to be our main demographic.

Also, important to point out that BigPoint publishes a lot of games, some of which will be perfect targets for us.

How To Run the Offer

This isn’t going to be a tough offer to test. PPV and Facebook are going to be excellent places to hit just the demographics and niches you want. Outside of that, your best bet will be direct banner buying from related web site owners. I think you’ll have a hard time finding a BSG related site that doesn’t have this plastered up and down the sides in every spot imaginable, but you might find some if you do some real digging.

Okay, so you’ve got the simple path. Targeting Battlestar Galactica related key terms and URLs. This is bound to get you mixed up in some bidding wars and hard entrance. If you have a small budget, this isn’t what you want to do. There is plenty of ways to go about this with having 0 to very little competition.

So lets go back to BigPoint games. There are a lot of games there, including another old gaming CPA offer that used to be pretty popular, Dark Orbit. This is one offer you can target. We’ve also got Deepolis and Nanofights which could also substitute for excellent targeting. I guarantee both of these have a following on Facebook and will have traffic on TrafficVance.

When you are writing ads for Facebook, keep in mind what nerds and gamers like about online games. Community, leveling up, getting powerful and enjoying a fantasy life they can’t have in the real world. Combine this with the nerdom of Battlestar Gallactica and you’ll be able to come up with some unique ads.

Cylon or Human? (or vice versa here! ALWAYS SPLIT TEST!) – Choose your side. Relive the action of the Battlestar Galactica TV show with the FREE online game! Play now!

Love BSG? – Play this fracking awesome game! Jump in your Viper, kill bad guys and become the top Ace on the Battlestar Galatica!

Fight for Survival – Help save the human race from extinction. Join the revolution in the Battlestar Galactica online MMORPG now!

Stupid and simple. If you are targeting some more abstract nerd topics, sell it a little more on the side of being an awesome game over the fact that its BSG. Some players may not be familiar with the series.

Landing Pages

A landing page for this offer isn’t going to be amazingly complex. The best thing to do here is to include some video from the series and or game, autoplay it where allowed and split test your ad copies and designs. There will be no formula for instant success other than testing. And always continue testing. Sure, that LP might be making you 100% ROI with a 10% CTR, but I know it is possible to have landing pages with CTRs of 20% and up over a broad range of targets. Always keep pushing yourself for more and more money. If you need some copy for your landing page, don’t think too much. The offer page has some you can rip, as well as the games info page.

Final Comments

This is a successful offer with a very niche following. You may be able to hit fans of the series currently following it, but chances are they’ve already seen the game and tried it. You’ll have a better chance of going outside the box here and broadening your targeting to those interested in other similar games, sci-fi television shows and movies.

P.S. I’m looking for an Asia based web designer to add to my team (S.E. Asians preferred). If you think you’d make an excellent addition to my team, contact me!

I haven’t seen anyone else blog about this, so I figured it was worth sharing here in case some of you haven’t seen it.

Now this is far from new news. I’ve had it happen to me when I used to use the Facebook Ad Manager. There are a few new tools out there that you can find by scouring the web, but I haven’t tested any, and it’s because of this very reason.

Because I’ve started running more legit campaigns, going after quality long term affiliate, personal and clientele campaigns, the value of my Facebook Advertising account is worth 10x more than the arbitrage I was doing a couple years ago. If you are automating ad building, you’ve probably gotten this warning already, and you should know that you risk a permanent account ban if you’re caught multiple times. If you are thinking about automation, you’ve been warned.

A funny thing about automating and not – I’ve found that my campaigns are more likely to get approved when I or one of my employees submits the ads manually. I haven’t tracked it, but that is what it feels like. Another thing you generally don’t get after submitting 100 ads by hand – errors. Obviously, it happens, but when you’re actively building your campaigns, you are much more likely to pick up on mistakes earlier than you would if you AFK ad build.

So do you guys still think it is worth the risk to automate ad building?

What do you guys want for Freebie Friday? It’s coming up within 2-3 days here, so I thought I might give my readers a chance to decide what they get.

It can be a landing page, a Facebook/PoF Image Pack, or banner creatives. I’ll have it cooked up for you, so by Friday afternoon, you’ll be able to take it and launch it with a new campaign!

Drop a comment below with what you want (styles, niche, colors, whatever) and I’ll pick one to be put into your email boxes in a few days!

A couple days ago I posted about Facebook over-reporting clicks. Now, I think I’ve experienced it!

Hmm… My tracking stats are on the bottom compared to the campaign on the top. I show 1/4th the clicks that Facebook does. I think they might just have some explaining to do! Anyone else see something this dramatic before? (picture moved to the bottom of post due to the ads in the post getting in the way). I’m just too lazy and upset to write much more here so here is some filler…. fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiilllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
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As you may, or may not yet know, Facebook recently released a statement that basically said they would be lightening up on some of their terms on how ads are approved. Ringtones, IQ, biz-op, dating and a few more niches were affected by this. To the heavy Facebook advertiser, this is like a godsend. Another recent improvement to Facebook ads is the ability to increase your ad spend to a ridiculous amount if you submit a credit check application. Some big players are getting daily limits set at $30,000. To get this bump, you’ll need to contact your Facebook Ads manager and ask them about how you can raise your limit. Comment here or contact me and I’ll get you hooked up with a Facebook Ads manager.

So with all these new goodies, if you aren’t advertising on Facebook yet, you probably should be getting into it now. You can do it on your own, but if you know Facebook like I do, you’d know it is a pain-in-the-ass to submit ads only to get them disapproved 12 hours later. This post will reveal some of the tools I use, and that you should use too if you wish to better perfect and target your campaigns.

Facebook Ads Manager – I gave this plugin quite a lashing in my other blog a while ago. Despite me calling it out, I can’t say I don’t absolutely love it. I can set a campaign to create 300 ads up with different headlines and texts, images, age targeting, countries, keywords, and bid prices, then click run, fall asleep and hopefully by the time I wake up they will be all approved and running. This thing does the grunt work of building campaigns, and you can save setups, too, so you can keep resubmitting the same ads over and over again to really piss off those Facebook “interns” (you should know by now they aren’t really interns). It has a high cost of $200, but it has been well worth it for me and should be worth it to anyone else that does a lot of Facebook. It sets up as a Firefox plugin and is controlled in the toolbars.

Facebook Ads Greasemonkey Script – You are gonna need Firefox and Greasemonkey to run this one. This thing lets you massively pause, activate, change click costs and even delete ads. This was great when I’d have 500 ads out of 501 ads disapproved in one adgroup (true story). It creates a checkbox for you to select which ads to modify without having to open up the indivdual ad’s page itself. This thing has saved me hours upon hours of work that I used to hate doing. It also allows me to easily pause ads and change bid prices during certain parts of the day I know an ad will do better.

Facebook Dayparting Script – From the same guy that did the above greasemonkey script comes the dayparting script. Dayparting just simply means you only run your ads during certain parts of the day. Rather than doing this manually,? this script will change the ads status for you. It is a bit difficult to configure and you need your own hosting plan, but it is well worth it once you realize how much money it can keep you from wasting on ads that don’t perform well during certain times of day. As an added bonus, this also works with Adbrite and Myspace.

FBSpy – I hate it when clever marketers release something that could make them thousands, even millions if they kept it to themselves. But, you gotta love that this is on the plate and out there for you. Pay $50, install this on your server and start scraping the Facebook adboard. Set up profiles in different countries through proxies and you can see what ads are running in other countries, too. Swipe and steal other peoples ads and LPs. Ah… the ethics of the game we are in.

Facebook AdBoard – If you are too poor for FBSpy, you can always just try browsing the Facebook AdBoard. They show you a bunch of ads targetted to the demographics and keywords of your profile. You can just create a bunch of different profiles varying the sex, age, relationship status, etc to see different ads.

Facebook Cloaking Script – Here is a pretty cool script that will collect IPs of the first IP to review your ad, and then redirect that IP each time to a different offer other than what you are promoting. This is good if you are trying to get ads up that might be determined as sketchy according to Facebook’s ad policies. It loads the data to a central database so there is already a ton of IPs collected.

If none of these really appeal to you, then think of your own script or plugin that you could use to take advantage of Facebook. If I could program at all, I know I would be on top of a few things fast.

There are probably plenty of other tools out there I’m not using, yet,? or haven’t even heard of, so if you have some suggestions list them in the comments and I’ll post them here.

So I guess my post yesterday upset some people. That came about due to the fact that I suggested reporting ads that might compete with yours. I don’t always think when I blog, so I just threw out some tips to you noobs not realizing that the big guys might be a bit angered by this. I guess I’d end up taking out some of their ads if I did this.

I was talking to some of the guys, and some said I should delete the post and some said I should keep it up. Well, I took it down, but then I was going to put it back up. I guess the text got wiped out when I unpublished it, because there is nothing in the edit post page. Unfortunate as I would have liked to look at it and make some new points.

Let’s take a look at what reporting on Facebook is used for. Reporting is an annonymous system to report ads that are negative as they are either pronographic, misleading, or it is offensive. I can only imagine the only people using this crap are 40+ year old soccer moms and, well, other marketers just like you and me.

I don’t know how much weight FB actually puts into each time an ad is reported. However, let’s just be safe and say they actually do look at the ad. When I suggested reporting ads, random reporting probably wouldn’t do much. If an ad is FB-grade, then FB wouldn’t shut it down. Reporting, I think, is more successful if you are reporting an ad that actually breaks Facebooks Ads ToS and that shit.

I actually don’t copy many ads. I’ve found success doing things my own way, and don’t always need to copy ads. If I do it, reporting the ad that I copied wouldn’t do much for my favor. If they pause their ad, what happens if that intern sees my ad that I copied from them? Denied, right? Right!

But, we know most of you who play Facebook game it as much as you can. Some still report, and yes I have done it, but I will think more thoroughly about it the next time if I see something that catches my eye. Reporting too much may lead to more strictly enforced Ad Guidelines, and we already know how much of a bitch Facebook is about that.

I am tired of seeing these 20 and Still Single? ads. Breaking the guidelines. Musta been a new intern, because I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten similar ads shot down.

If I found out that someone reported my ads, which lead to paused campaigns, I can understand how you might be upset. Which is why you should never “put all your eggs in 1 basket.” Run a shit load of ads, k? They can’t see and report them all, so you shouldn’t be crying too much over a few paused ads.

If you want to hate me, then hate me. I don’t randomly go around reporting ads, though. And I will certainly think about what I’m writing a bit more, but don’t expect me to always go light. I’m emotional, and I’ll fight against anything until you understand I’m better than you. Haha.

Run it down again. Reporting might lead to less competition, however, it is kinda sour, can lead to stricter rules, and might not actually carry any weight at all. It’s up to you whether or not you want to do it.