Facebook is weird! I mean it’s a great platform for reconnecting with old friends and making new friends. It’s awesome platform to get cheap “Likes” or “Reviews” on a Brand page. But if you want to sale something and then you want to track every movement of the Facebook visitors through Facebook ads, it’s not a great platform like Google Adwords. Facebook is making great progress, there is no doubt, but still there are many limitations in Facebook ads which force me to write this blog.
I have written “How to Add Facebook Conversion Pixel to Magento?“. In that article, I have showed how you can add all standard events (besides base event) on your Magento site, manually. You can eventually see lots of conversions in Facebook ads manager but those conversions are not like “Google Adwords” conversions as they did not generate from a particular “Success” or “Thank You” page.
If you want to track conversions from a particular page, let’s say “Thank You“, “Registration Complete” or “Success” page, then you need to use different standard event in that page. I have discussed it here.
However, I can’t see any leads information in Facebook ads manager! That’s weird.
I mean, what am I doing wrong? I have done everything they said in this tutorial.
As there was no luck, I created custom conversions and finally I can see some good results:
I will make another blog post on how to make Facebook custom conversions but in this post, I want to show you the cons of Facebook ads.
11 Reasons Why I like Google Adwords than Facebook Ads
1. You can’t get accurate information from Facebook ads manager (e.g. leads, purchase). But when you are in Google adwords, all information will be accurate if you have placed “Google Conversion Code” accurately on your “Thank You“, “Registration Complete” or “Success” page
2. In Facebook, you can get Conversion/Lead/Purchase information by using “custom conversions” only. Unfortunately, that’s also not accurate as if you visit your “Thank You” page manually (without clicking Facebook Ads, like you copy “thank you” page URL and paste and go in your browser), it will count that as a conversion.
In adwords, a conversion will only happen when someone clicks on your ad(s) and performs a certain action on your web page like fill up a form, subscription, or registration.
3. You can only see last 14 days data in Facebook’s custom conversions panel. But in Google Adwords, you can see all time data! Following image is taken from Facebook custom conversions panel.
4. From Facebook’s custom conversion panel, you can’t pick up a custom date range. But in Google Adwords, you can select custom date range. Following image is taken from one of our client’s adwords account.
5. You can create only 20 custom conversions in Facebook. In adwords, there is no limit!
6. When you create a custom conversion in Facebook, you can’t delete it! You can edit it though! But in Google Adwords, you can delete and of course edit a conversion code.
7. Did you try to export Facebook custom conversions data? Well you can’t as there is no export option! All data older than 14 days will be gone if you don’t take the note manually! Now who has the time to manually take all the information in excel bi-weekly?
In Google Adwords, you can export anything you want! You can export campaigns, ad groups, ad copies, keywords and all in Google Adwords.
8. Did you ever try phone tracking or call tracking in Facebook? Well you can’t as this feature is not available yet in Facebook! With Google Adwords, you can get all phone call conversion data! Check following image (image is taken from one of our client’s adwords account).
9. If you have a single Facebook account but multiple websites, how can you advertise all your websites on Facebook? Facebook provides a single pixel id (also known as default id) for each Facebook account user. So you have to use same Pixel code in all your websites! Unless you are using custom conversions, it will be very hard for you to track conversions from these websites in Facebook Ads Manager.
10. Annoying/misleading notification in Facebook ads manager. Check the following image
It doesn’t matter whether you have implemented Facebook Pixel Code accurately on your site or not, these notifications will not go away unless you remove/close them from the Facebook ads manager!
On top of that, if you are managing Facebook client(s) account(s), they will still see these notifications though you have removed it from your side. Unless they remove it from their side, these notifications will not go anywhere!
11. Unknown error. Did you notice this yesterday?
Facebook pixel missing product information error. It was generated from Facebook yesterday (March 15th, 2016). There is nothing we could do. Yesterday I wasted 3 hours of my time finding a solution of that issue! In adwords, you will hardly face these issues.
Bottom Line
Facebook has come a long way but there is still long way to go. I believe, Facebook would be a gold mine for the advertisers/investors/entrepreneurs if they could solve these issues. Google is Google. No one can compete them. But Facebook has great amount of returning, dedicated visitors, browsing different ads and giving likes on a day to day basis. Moreover, the number of Facebook visitors is growing. In my opinion, there is a huge potentiality in Facebook ads but they need to improve the platform first. Right now, only few advanced users like us can get benefit from Facebook Pixel or Custom Pixel Conversion Code. But they should think about general audience too!
About Ekhlas Uddin Jewel
Ekhlas Uddin Jewel is Google Adwords certified individual & SEO, SEM, SMM specialist from Bangladesh. He is the founder of SEO-Service-Provider.Org. For large SEO/Adwords project(s), please feel free to contact him.
This is very well said. I like the way you proved your points and you are very experienced with the topic that you have discussed.
Thanks and congrats on your first comment Jose. Yes, we are indeed very experienced in all kinds of social/search media marketing e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Adwords