Facebook Ads dropped by 20%. Mark Zuckerberg calls you and asks you to fix it. What do you do?
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Platinum PM
Seek clarity
When you say Facebook ads dropped:
- Is it ads created or ads consumed(viewed), assuming it's ads consumed
- Is it on a particular FB platform or across all of FB owned properties that runs ads, since there is the option for FB ads to adverstise cross platform I'm assuming it's across platforms
Let's start investigating
See if the problem actually existgs
Internal
- what's the drop relative to - what are you comparing with, is it a WoW drop or MoM drop or YoY drop? assuming it's WoW
- Is the data accurate? did we deploy any changes that could affect the data and how it reads- Are the ads created unchanged?
- is it specific to a platform (android or iOS) or country or region or cohort (phone,android version or iOS version or ISP or app version)
- Are the ads dropped across all types of ads or a certain format of ads only
- Are any of the other FB metrics down
- Are the ads being displayed as expected
- Are there any spikes in any of errors related to ads
- Were there any major product deployments over the same period, that could affect ads
- Were there any issues reported in customer reports? what do our reviews say over the same period
External
- Did the competition have any major changes
- Were there any major external events ? down time in a country or region?
- Was a similar drop there last year?
- Was the traffic last week unusually higher than usual which creating this artificial impression of a drop
- Was there a major OS release or major feature deprecation that lead to this
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Gold PM
Clarifying questions: How you define Ad drops?
- # of Ads businesses buy per day or month? To ensure, there are no outliers in metrics, did FB loose any big high volume businesses for advertisement due to some boycott?
- # of businesses sponsoring ads dropped?
- Or the user CTR dropped? (assuming this)
User Journey:
Users get targeted and not targetted ads in Newsfeed and the groups:
Targeted Ads: Based on user engagement, FB knows what user is interested in. These targettted ads have tendency of high CTR. Businesses getting high CTR and conversion rate will feel the ads are worth and will continue to invest.
Untargeted ads : If FB does not have hugh user data or user engagement is low, FB will show less targeted ads. These ads may not work well for business.
Root cause analysis:
Internal factors :
- Time factor: Did this happen sudden or gradual?
- Is the issue Device, geographic, user cohort specific?
- Is there some release that introdued a bug that caused this?
- Feature releases that caused this directly or indirectly
- Some feature release reduced user engagement like algorith change in notifications etc and thus CTR
- Some algorithm change that shows less targetted ads and thus less CTR
- Some UI changes related to ads ?
External factors: Below factor may cause less user engagement and thus low CTR
Competitor's Promo or is attracting users more on their platform
Bad PR
Political reasons
Server issue
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Silver PM
clarification questions:
- what platform the Facebook ads droped?
- what ads metrics droped? is the customer who clicks the ad droped or the business who buying ads on FB droped?
- how long has it been droped? mom or yoy?
- in which region ads droped? US? global?
- how did the data come up?
- only FB or other FB products included? like INS?
- technical:
- one specific platform dropped? web, app? android or ios? something wrong with that platform? can be web down but app is fine, or only ios because some changes from apple
- client or server?
- ISP?
- business:
- any specific region? sales region may vary
- any specific ads category?
- time when it is down (some season may just not be peak)
- any competitor news
- any marketing event
- any operation process change for customer to use ads?
- do we use a different way to measure the data?
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Boost your confidence in PM interviews by attending peer to peer mock interview practices, group practices, and QA sessions with expert PMs
Get unlimited access for $12/month
Get access to 2,346 pm interview questions and answers to give yourself a strong edge against other candidates that are interviewing for the same position
Get access to over 238 hours of video material containing an interview prep course, recorded mock interviews by expert PMs, group practice sessions, and QAs with expert PMs
Boost your confidence in PM interviews by attending peer to peer mock interview practices, group practices, and QA sessions with expert PMs
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