Earlier this month I mentioned dark patterns with Amazon Advertising campaigns – subtle cues that encourage you to spend more on bids and daily budgets, despite having no benefit to the advertiser. Here’s another dark pattern alert, this time for Facebook lead campaigns. This Facebook lead ads dark pattern has the potential to waste marketing budget with diminishing returns over time.
Facebook Ads showed me this graph for an existing campaign that has been running for the past 2-3 months. It implies that if I scale spending, leads will increase at the same cost.
WRONG. Experienced brands know growth is not linear as FB ad campaigns scale. Cost per lead (or CPC) does not stay level as you double or triple your campaign spend. It goes up! In my experiments, cost per lead doubles as spend rises past $50 per day. I measure the CPL carefully as I incrementally raise the spend every week, and when I start to see the effectiveness of the campaign decline, pull back on spending so my CPL remains constant.
This Facebook lead ads dark pattern is another reason not to trust Facebook’s ad teams or “pro” advice.