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Facebook Promoted Post Pricing Seems Variable

Becky Doles

While the tech press started covering the new Facebook Promoted Posts feature last week, it wasn’t available on the HasOffers Facebook page until today. We haven’t promoted any posts yet (though we may try this one), so I don’t have stats on how it works just yet, but I can tell you we’re seeing something really strange in the pricing.

As soon as I saw the Promote button at the bottom of the post interface, I went to check out the pricing. When I’m signed in, I currently see pricing similar to the screenshot below, which says we can reach about 400 people for $5.00, 800 for $10, 1200 for $15, all the way up to 2300 for $30.

HasOffers Facebook Promoted Page Jake

Promoted post pricing from my Facebook account is different than what Marketing Land shows in the screenshot they posted last week when writing about the service. Marketing Land can apparently reach 1200 people for $5. We have different pricing on the Facebook page for our MobileAppTracking product as well. I speculate the variation in pricing between pages has something to do with the location of the people the post reaches, but that’s not what’s strange.

When Todd Martini went to the HasOffers page to check out the feature, the pricing was different. Todd reaches about 300 people for $5, 600 for $10, 900 for $15, and caps out at a maximum reach of 1800 people for $30. You can see Todd’s screen capture below.

Facebook Promote Post pricing Todd

When I switch from administering the HasOffers page with my own account to using Facebook as the page, the pricing changes yet again. You can see the pricing I get when using Facebook as the HasOffers page below.

Facebook Promote Post used as Facebook Page

I’m not sure if the pricing difference between different admins is part of a test during rollout, but you should definitely see which Facebook page admin gets the best deal before you post. Maximizing your reach for the minimum spend seems like a great deal no matter how you slice it.

Anybody else seeing a difference in pricing between multiple admins of the same page?

Author
Becky Doles

Becky is the Senior Content Marketing Manager at TUNE. Before TUNE, she led a variety of marketing and communications projects at San Francisco startups. Becky received her bachelor's degree in English from Wake Forest University. After living nearly a decade in San Francisco and Seattle, she has returned to her home of Charleston, SC, where you can find her enjoying the sun and salt water with her family.

18 responses to “Facebook Promoted Post Pricing Seems Variable”

  1. Dan Mitchell says:

    I’m seeing Estimated Reach 4900 for $30.00…

  2. Amber Taylor says:

    Sounds fishy to me. Why offer one person one price and another a different price for promoting the same ad. Here is my breakdown:
    $5 = 400
    $10 = 700
    $15 = 1100
    $20 =1400
    $30 = 2100
    $50 = 3500
    $75 = 5300
    %100 = 6200

    So here is my response. These 11,000 people on my fans list have subscribed because they want to see the posts. Now, that’s not enough? We have to pay to make sure they see it or Facebook won’t post it to their timelines? I already spend money every month on Facebook advertising and now, they want more. I don’t think I am too impressed with the new Facebook “scheme”. It’s shady when they don’t even offer two different people the same offer.

    • Kiki rose says:

      If you go to the help section it says your fans will still see your posts! Please read the help section before jumping to conclusions.

    • The thing to keep in mind is that those 11,000 people probably aren’t seeing your posts. They may have liked your page, but if they don’t interact with it regularly, the Facebook EdgeRank will deprecate your posts in favor of posts from friends and pages they do interact with regularly. Promoted Post allows you to reach a segment of your fans that like wouldn’t see your posts and might prompt them to become engaged in the future or remind them that they ever liked your page in the first place.

      • Amber Taylor says:

        Thank you, Jake, for your courteous reply. I am still wary of the fact that it offers up a different pricing structure depending on which admin is posting the links – even on the same fan page, but I may give it a try to see if it helps my traffic.

  3. It’s pretty normal to have some audience variations – Facebook adds some stochastic variation to their audience population estimates routinely. Over time they vary in a predictable way, and are less pronounced relatively speaking for larger sites/pages.

  4. It’s a high cpm for untargeted circulation…

  5. David White says:

    I see 2.200 for $5 and 2.900 for $10

  6. Ryan says:

    Your best to build your audience before using the paid promotion feature as you will be wasting money to reach a measly 1000 page fans. We have a few pages with over 25,000 page fans and this is our break down.

    $16.00 Estimated Reach 4,000
    $21.00 Estimated Reach 5,400
    $32.00 Estimated Reach unknown
    $52.00 Estimated Reach 14,000
    $78.00 Estimated Reach 20,000
    $110.00 Estimated Reach 27,000

  7. Hey Jake,

    Know this is an older post but ran into the same thing today. Promoted a post yesterday at a $10 spend for 35-50% reach, looked to increase the budget today and that same spend suddenly only gets 10-13% reach. Not that the figure is any good… They only just started including mobile reach into their figures so who knows how screwy that measurement is.

    What a frustrating situation.

    Dan

  8. Aaron says:

    Perhaps they are doing some A/B testing to determine the best pricing?

  9. Penelope says:

    I have a question: If a page has only 500 fans…the Promoted Posts work well? How much do i will need to spend? I want to gro the community. Thank you!!

  10. Grant Gannon says:

    Found this on Google and wanted to weigh in. For $30 I am seeing a variation of max reach between 1700 and 4100 fans between two admin accounts on a page I manage. Very strange.

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