Facebook Ads

Google owns me. It probably knows about me more than I do. I store most of my life on Google. My photos (Picasa), my plans (Calendar), my contacts and conversations (Gmail/Gtalk), my interests (Reader/Blogger) and so on. In fact they own me so much that I've never dared to think that I could use a different advertising service than AdWords. That's hell of a brand loyalty! Until recently that is.
A couple of weeks ago I decided to check out Facebook's ad system, so I started a small campaign for my company. Here's a short summary of my experience.
I love the targeting options! Facebook makes it damn easy to target very specific groups (say, people on their birthday - great idea!). It also lets you specify criteria like age, education, marital status, spoken languages and region. But what really put smile on my face was the ability to target people associated with specific events, groups, pages or even applications! Can you imagine the endless possibilities?
Another thing that I really appreciate is the instant estimation of number of users who fit the criteria. Very informative and useful.
Now to the downsides (of course there are some!). The most obvious one: not everyone uses Facebook and if they do, they may not use it to the extent that will let you do such narrow targeting. Basically, success of your ad heavily depends on completeness of target users' profiles.
Another thing that prevents me from falling in love with Facebook Ads is the long approval time. I like to tweak my ads a lot and test many versions and it's not uncommon for me to change my mind every day or two. Facebook makes me wait 10 hours or more for even a very small change to get approved and published. Takes all the fun away.
And the worst thing of all. Their click-through stats were significantly higher than what Google Analytics showed. I have no idea where this comes from (and I can't say it's Facebook's fault), but I have the nasty feeling that I pay for false clicks. I know Google put a lot of effort to detect and eliminate false clicks in their AdWords platform.
Overall I'd give Facebook Ads 4 out of 5 stars. I hope the platform will continue to grow and above issues will eventually go away.