there is always a delay the first day. Give it 24 hours before trying to analyse it.

I'm not sure that's fully correct,
I've created a similar targeting another state, and made my bid $0.3 (still lower than the suggested one of $0.6), and got 3 impressions in the last few hours.
afterwards, I did the same targeting another state, this time with $0.4 bid, and got 8 impressions in the last hour or two. still got 0 impressions for my $0.12 bid campaign that i created about 17 hours ago.... so it seems the bid level does influence the exposure..

would I really need to pay that much just for having my ad show up?

Hi rugger, i had the same problem, created an ad, got approved waited for hours but no impressions nothing. Its like the ad was not running or showing.

There are a couple of things you need to check out before
like in the billing section that your "Account Spend" limit hasnt reached.
If thats ok, you should check that the campaign limit hasnt reached.
Again if thats ok then
"and here is where 99.9% is always the reason the campaigns are not showing"
your bid is way to low and you need to increase it!

Example lets say
Suggested Bid:
$0.30 - 0.80 US
Step 1:
Put $0.50 bid and check in 5 minutes
Not working? Increase the bid by $0.10

At least thats how i got my campaign to start.

Other options:
1. Delete the campaign and start a new one.
2. Delete the ad and start a new one.
3. Open a new facebook account.
Those suggestions where found on the internet from other users.

The above suggestion to increase the bid because it too low was given by the facebook help representative and thats how i figured it out.

You're still only bidding 1/5th of their recommended minimum. Why would they show your ad when they can show someone else's ad who's paying more? You gotta pony up.

eventually I had raised my bid to $0.6, my previous question still remains though...

To elaborate on the answers you've received, Facebook does reward quality ads. If my suggested CPC bid is .50-.75, I'll set my budget at $2.00 and run it for a day. If it performed well with a good CTR, the suggested bid range will generally drop to .06-.18. I can then lower my bid and raise my budget.

I recommend raising your ad budget slowly over the course of days for FB ads as well. If you switch it from $2.00 to $50.00 in one move, it'll generally deliver the majority of your budget all at once as opposed to slowly throughout the day. This will saturate the market and ruin your stellar CTR and CPC at the snap of a finger. Your ad may not bounce back from that and get less than preferential placement as a result.

Ok thanks Ron, I'll go ahead and duplicate the pages,

Gozzo, what do you mean by .300 CTR? a 0.003%?

and another important question - could campaigns with low CTR cause my Min suggested PPC to go up, on other campaigns? or maybe hurt the Min CPC required for any page that would be hosted on the same domain?

nefirious - the product I'm trying to promote is pretty general, therefore I cannot define the targeted audience to be of specific parameters rather than age/gender/location, so that's probably causing a low CTR as well, I've started a similar campaign for $0.6, this was a bit below the suggested min bid, I received in the last 24 hours about 8,000 ad reach and 4 clicks, 0.028% CTR... is that really bad?
because my suggested Min CPC jumped to $1...

I plan to pause all ads, duplicate the pages so I can better track the CR and then create new ads.... I wonder what Min CPC FB would want now, $1 or about $0.6 like when I had started..?

Its the end of the month! CPC is going through the roof. Plus, Facebooks quarterly earnings is coming up. They need to push those mobile revenues up so they have to raise the CPC across the board.

They'll call it strategy for making more profits. They'll claim the CPC is higher because of demand.

Ahh, I WONDERED about the "24 hr. factor" before trying to analyze my ad... That is what I wondered about. Now my answer lies right here. Thank you very much for confirming for me.

it didn't had anything with 24 hours actually, it was all about the CPC... if the bid is below the min suggested CPC, or even above it but not way above it, from my experience the ad would get very low exposure...

I learned something else here reading. I did pony up, but good to get my ads to get shown quicker. I ponied to close to the top bid. as is 5-7 cents closest. We will see what happens now.

Have you tried targeting a smaller audience? Its easier to track the effectiveness of an interest group when you isolate them. Plus the cpc will vary- some groups won't be worth the price per click, others will.

I'll give an example -

Yesterday I've created another campaign,
I've targeted it so it would be around 6,000,000 people from the US (which I suppose should be targeted enough on the one hand, and on the other hand should give me plenty of ad reach, as long as I bid correctly).

My suggested CPC was $0.5 - $1.05, so I chose a $0.7 bid, and in about 15 hours received only about 10,000 ad reach, and a 8 clicks, CTR was 0.050% which should be considered pretty good, isn't it?

Throughout this 15 hour time period, FB displayed my ad to only 10,000 people. this is something I can't understand, as the targeted audience is 6,000,000 + My bid was in the middle of their suggestion, and the CTR was pretty good.

a few hours ago I've topped my bid to 0.85, nothing happened, only a few hundreds more ad reach. and two hours ago, I had topped my bid to 1.07 - over their max suggested CPC, and still barely received anymore ad reach.

so I don't understand what's wrong, why can't I get an ad reach volume that correlates with the number of potential targeted audience, even when I bid over the max?!
(I didn't pass my budget, so this can't be the issue)

also, If FB forces me to bid that much just to receive exposure, that would kill a lot of potential campaigns as it would be harder to find a product that gives out enough commission to cover the CPC costs...

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In my experience,

Bid HIGH, above the suggested bid. Don't worry, you won't end up paying what you bid, but it will get your good placement and that means higher CTR, which will result in a low CPC. Facebook uses what I'd call an "Early Winner" code, meaning if it thinks your ad is a winner, it will be shown more and in better placement. But if you bid low then there is no way it can achieve this. Make sense?

The advantage to this strategy is of course good placement, good CPC and longevity. The down side is that you will spend more in the beginning. Usually FB will dump my ad budget for the day very quickly. The key is, don't pause your ad, let let it run for 24 hours. When your budget resets the next day is when you'll see a better CPC and start to see the benefits.

Of course you need good copy and good images to make this work. Any CTR lower than .250% isn't worth my time

Anyways maybe this will help you out. Good luck!

^^ Yes, this. Over-bid at first.

You need to establish your baseline conversion rate. Forget about your budget for a little while, get as many clicks as you can, and see how they're converting.

Once you know how well (or poorly) your page converts, then you can figure out the maximum you should bid.