BBC's Cellan-Jones talks Facebook "VirtualBagel" Investigation

Following a Facebook investigation which saw the BBC question the value of Facebook 'likes' and advertising investment for brands, The Drum spoke to BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones, the man behind "VirtualBagel"

"We'd been told by various people that Facebook's adverts either weren't delivering good results or were delivering lots and lots of "customers" or likes which were of little value and we wanted to put that to the test," BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones told The Drum. From this Cellan-Jones and a team at the BBC decided test the theory by setting up a Facebook page ‘VirtualBagel’ to investigate the value of Facebook advertising and ‘likes’ on the social media site. He explained the concept of “VirtualBagel” was little more than a picture and a slightly daft slogan; it wasn’t promoted in anyway except via Facebook and widely targeted the US, the UK and a number of Middle East and Asian countries. In just 24 hours “VirtualBagel” had garnered 1,600 likes and just a short time later the fictitious brand had amassed an online following 3,000 fans. The findings of this investigation, according to Cellan-Jones, call into question the value of advertising on the social media site, he added: “advertisers are paying for a click from somebody who doesn’t really exist and the question is for Facebook, which we put to them, is what are you doing to police that? Is it a serious issue?”According to online statistics around 6% of Facebook profiles are bogus profiles and recently General Motors (GM) pulled their $10 million advertising portfolio from Facebook claiming there weren’t getting any real return from being on the site. Cellan-Jones told us he had also spoken to a “major British brand, who didn’t want to be named, but who said exactly the same, we can’t justify spending money on adverts on Facebook. You might want to be on there, you might want to have an interesting page and engage with people but spending money on adverts seems pretty pointless.”Facebook and social media consultants have responded by saying this is an example of poor advertising practice and brands will get better results and better returns if they target their adverts correctly. Worryingly for Facebook, which has recently went public, Cellan-Jones’ findings, in his words, show “you can achieve an awful lot on Facebook for your brand without ever spending a penny which is a big worry for Facebook as it needs to go on building revenue quite substantially if it’s to justify its valuation.”