Assorted Afflatuses

My advertising campaign on Facebook has produced some very interesting results. I say interesting because neither my Facebook nor my Google AdWords campaigns have, in their short lifetimes, failed to bring me any additional business. The Facebook advertising, though, has given me an interesting look into the way the human mind functions, or rather does not function.

As I mentioned on Friday, Facebook does not allow advertisers to locally target their "flyers" to specific geographic locations when paid for on a per-click basis, rather than on a per-impression basis. So, my advertisements have been displayed to Facebook users across the United States, despite the fact that my business operates locally in the Portland area. To compensate for this unfortunate fact, I made sure to specify where my business operated in the advertisement by noting that I offer, "…computer consulting services in the Portland, OR area…" (emphasis added).

One would think, especially given the number of college graduates and students using Facebook, that this would deter someone in Iowa from clicking on the ad. Logic and intelligent thought, however, collapse when confronted with a dose of unfiltered human behavior. According to my fancy Google Analytics — which provides me with an almost Orwellian amount of detail about every one of my visitors — my business' website received several referrals from Facebook users in the states of California, Iowa and Kentucky

It appears that people either blindly click on my advertisements out of sheer boredom, or they read its title, "Computer Support" and click through without a full perusal. Otherwise, I fail to see how anyone could possibly mistake Portland, Oregon with Fort Dodge, Iowa.

While I generally try to think positively and adopt a sanguine outlook, this information depresses me. Either the average Facebook user has absolutely no intelligence and cannot distinguish one discrete name from another, or the average Facebook user displays absolutely no prudence whatsoever in reading advertisements and further compounds consumer ignorance.

But this is only day four of the campaign. Knowing as little as I do about online advertising, it may well take a full week to really start delivering on its promise of fantastic ROI.