Just saw a client lose $2,000 on a bad Facebook ad targeting choice

I was at a coworking space in Austin last week when a freelancer showed me their campaign. They had set up a broad interest ad for local pet services but forgot to exclude people outside the city. Within 3 days, they spent $2,000 on clicks from all over Texas, mostly in Dallas and Houston. I helped them fix the geo-targeting and pause the ad, then we rebuilt it with a 15 mile radius. Has anyone else seen a simple targeting mistake eat up a whole budget that fast?

3 comments

3 Comments

kim_west19d ago

Hear that a lot, honestly. People don't know how fast those pennies add up when you forget to check one little box.

murphy.blair19d ago

Man, $2,000 gone that fast? What kind of targeting were you even running where it burned through cash like that?

jamesf2619d ago

I mean, idk, maybe it's just me but spending $2,000 that fast on bad targeting doesn't sound like the end of the world. You caught it in 3 days and rebuilt it. That's like learning the hard way but it's only $2,000 in the grand scheme of running a business. I've seen people blow way more than that on "good" targeting that just didn't convert at all, so at least you got some data out of it. Better to lose that now than keep making the same mistake with bigger budgets later.