Dennis Yu

How to diagnose newsfeed burnout

The newsfeed placements (desktop and mobile) are tricky. It’s a “personal” space for Facebook users, so you wouldn’t want to burn out from a high frequency or push overtly promotional messaging. Save that for the dark posts to fans and the RHS placements.

Above we have a newsfeed that is at a frequency of 6.5. The CTR has fallen to 0.352%. We like to see CTR stay above 1% and frequency below 2.0.

You can also look at your negative feedback to tell if users are weary. Grab this via your page insights, downloading the clunky CSV file on post insights. You can also expand the comments to see if you have people demanding that you “get off my Facebook”.

Besides user experience, a poor CTR or quality score (now defunct) is financial, Facebook will charge you more. 126 clicks for $91.40 is 72 cents a click. Had this ad not burned out, we’d likely see a 1% CTR (3 times better) and 24 cents a click (a third of the price).

The exception to a seemingly high-frequency ad is the page post ad that is always on “promote most recent post”. Provided that you’re posting daily, this ad is not going to burn out, no matter the budget you allocate against it. The true frequency is lower than stated.

Facebook is progressively limiting the frequency of newsfeed ads based on your negative feedback. The rule doesn’t apply to RHS (right-hand side) placements, since users expect ads there.


Dennis Yu

Dennis Yu is co-author of the #1 best selling book on Amazon in social media, The Definitive Guide to TikTok Ads. He has spent a billion dollars on Facebook ads across his agencies and agencies he advises. Mr. Yu is the "million jobs" guy-- on a mission to create one million jobs via hands-on social media training, partnering with universities and professional organizations. You can find him quoted in major publications and on television such as CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, NPR, and LA Times. Clients have included Nike, Red Bull, the Golden State Warriors, Ashley Furniture, Quiznos-- down to local service businesses like real estate agents and dentists. He's spoken at over 750 conferences in 20 countries, having flown over 6 million miles in the last 30 years to train up young adults and business owners. He speaks for free as long as the organization believes in the job-creation mission and covers business class travel. You can find him hiking tall mountains, eating chicken wings, and taking Kaqun oxygen baths-- likely in a city near you.

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