do FB advertising services include favorable "comments"?

September 8, 2023 2:02 PM

I have my suspicions, but I have never bought advertising from FB so I don't know. Do you know?

My FB feed (yes I know FB sucks, I have my reasons for using it) is full of ads for products. Typically, the ads have lots of comments on them. Now it's not like I scroll through the whole thing, but once or twice when I've seen the comment threads, it looks to me like the "comments" are probably paid for. Like say it's an ad for mascara, and the first several comments will be something like "I usually don't even like mascara, but I love this!" or "my boyfriend says I look so sexy when I put this on!"

Comments like this are something the advertisers are paying for, right? Random people aren't really leaving these comments spontaneously when an ad for a product they already use magically appears in their feed?

posted by fingersandtoes to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

I'm a bit confused - are you asking whether, when I buy advertising from Facebook, they offer me bot/farmed comments as well? Or are you asking whether marketing companies, who offer ad campaign management, also pay for comments on ads that they've bought from Facebook?
posted by sagc at 2:17 PM on September 8, 2023

You can’t buy fake Facebook comments from Facebook. However, there are many, many companies who will generate fake comments for you.
posted by rockindata at 2:25 PM on September 8, 2023

Response by poster: I have no idea how it works. So you buy an ad, and separately buy a "marketing service" to boost it?
posted by fingersandtoes at 2:35 PM on September 8, 2023

Best answer: Pretty much, yes. Or you just pay a marketing service to do what they think is best for your product, and they both buy the ads from FB, and pay some other, even shadier firm to comment.
posted by sagc at 2:37 PM on September 8, 2023

Best answer: Some companies also offer “real” customers deals or free product for leaving positive reviews and comments. It’s a huge problem on Amazon and others. It’s against terms of service but happens all the time.
posted by Crystalinne at 2:41 PM on September 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

As someone who buys ads across all the Meta services, I can tell you that randos get buck wild in the comments, especially on Facebook. I 100% believe that two real people who have opinions about mascara would be commenting to each other about mascara. I've had people plan out playdates for the kids in the comments of my ads.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 3:47 PM on September 8, 2023 [12 favorites]

Some of it could also be real people trying to boost their own "brand." I knew someone who'd jump into threads like that trying to get whatever algorithm drives the feeds to push their stuff more heavily to the same friends ("friends") being targeted by other people's ads. Or sometimes they'd be fishing for a sponsorship offer, thinking the company doing the ad might eventually care enough to click through and see that they had a following and were available for such gigs. I don't know how much those tactics ever actually worked, but they believed in them.
posted by teremala at 4:30 PM on September 8, 2023

As someone who buys ads across all the Meta services, I can tell you that randos get buck wild in the comments, especially on Facebook. I 100% believe that two real people who have opinions about mascara would be commenting to each other about mascara. I've had people plan out playdates for the kids in the comments of my ads.

I want to second this. I work for a company that buys a ton of Meta advertising and while we do partner with influencers on Insta to post about us, we don't (and would not) pay for comments ... and we get hundreds of comments on all kinds of ads

For some reason people just like to leave comments on ads. Part of my job is actually using a 3rd party tool (egain) to monitor comments on our FB ads and posts and I've seen some stuff, let me tell you. People like to have opinions about things and share those opinions (both positive and negative).

I'm not aware of any reputable company who pays for FB comments although I'm sure there are services out there who do them in bulk.
posted by anastasiav at 5:04 PM on September 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

If you pay to boost a post, more people will see it and comment on it. You can then delete or hide all the unfavorable comments. So it will appear that sponsored posts are only receiving favorable comments, but that's not part of what you paid Facebook for, that's just your social media manager moderating the comments.
posted by Jacqueline at 7:44 PM on September 8, 2023 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Ok so am I understanding that an ad functions just like any post where the poster/advertiser can delete any comments they don't want; plus, there exist marketing services that will provide the desirable comments, for a fee? (But these may not be necessary, because people really do provide all kinds of comments, for any number of reasons, including the hope that they may be contacted and compensated, or build a reputation as an influencer)?
posted by fingersandtoes at 9:07 AM on September 9, 2023