Kickstarter’s refusal to add the Facebook Pixel is hurting creators
How the Facebook Pixel could empower creators to bring more creative projects to life
Let’s start with the good. Kickstarter has made huge impact in our world by helping creators raise over $4,476,252,214 from 168,223 projects and 16,688,068 backers as of August 15th, 2019.
Now, the not so good. Kickstarter could allow for even more projects to come to life if it would add the Facebook Pixel. Their refusal to do so (for reasons unknown to the public) is disempowering creators as it drastically impacts the ease at which someone can run their own Facebook advertisements.
Facebook has 20–25% of the advertising market share. It’s one of the largest sources of traffic to Kickstarter campaigns. Creators have no way of using it without complicated workarounds or turning to specialized, often ill intentioned, companies.
It’s time for Kickstarter to let creators use the Facebook Pixel.
What does the Facebook Pixel do?
Before I get into why I think the Facebook Pixel is so important, let’s briefly talk about what the Facebook Pixel does. The Facebook Pixel allows you to track your advertising efforts. If implemented on Kickstarter, you would be able to track important metrics such as:
- If someone purchased from an ad
- If someone visited the checkout but didn’t purchase
- If someone visited the campaign page but didn’t purchase
Just this basic data would allow creators to measure the return on their ad spend easily or retarget visitors who didn’t buy with different ads.
Furthermore, giving Facebook this data will automatically make your ads more effective. When the Facebook Pixel tracks a purchase, their algorithm automatically starts showing your ads to people like the person that purchased. Without the Facebook Pixel, this can’t happen.
Kickstarter and the Facebook Pixel
Creators can’t control their own ads
Right now, Facebook ads are one of the largest sources of traffic to Kickstarter campaigns, but creators can’t measure the effectiveness of their ads like they should. Instead, they are hiring companies who have invested in systems to track their Facebook ads without using Facebook’s Pixel. Since creators feel stuck and unable to do the advertising themselves, many fall victim to companies with predatory business models.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that all advertising companies have ill intentions. But unfortunately, integrity is not very high in the crowdfunding space and it’s hard to know to trust. I personally know many creators who would opt to run their own ads if it was easier for them to do so.
I went back to many of our past clients at LaunchBoom to have them weigh in on the subject. Here’s what they said.
What do Kickstarter creators think?
Do you think Kickstarter’s refusal to add the Facebook Pixel hurts Kickstarter creators?
“Absolutely it does. As a bigger business I feel like we can make better estimates and get some degree of accuracy in our ROI numbers, however, if you are a brand new creator, where do you even start to get estimates? You don’t know the life time value of a customer, you don’t know your return rates, you don’t understand the true costs of shipping. On a platform where so much is already estimated, why force creators to guess at whether their ad spend is even working? No small creator can spend money under those circumstances.”
If Kickstarter added the Facebook Pixel, how do you feel it would affect your campaign?
“It would allow us to more confidently invest more into advertising, drive traffic, acquire new customers and more precisely understand what audiences are most attracted to our product and mission.”
If Kickstarter added the Facebook Pixel, how do you feel it would affect your campaign?
“As a company that has launched several campaigns in the top 1%, the more information we have on what drives customers towards a purchase the better.”
Indiegogo and the Facebook Pixel
Creators can measure the effectiveness of their ads
Although Indiegogo has raised less total funds than Kickstarter, it has added many innovative features to the platform that benefit creators — the Facebook Pixel is one of them.
It’s one of the central reasons why tech & hardware creators are moving from Kickstarter to Indiegogo and raising even more funds.
We got the opportunity to work with the team at VAVA on their VAVA 4K Laser Projector project. Before working with us, they launched two successful Kickstarter campaigns. One raised $452,502 and one raised $777,777. We took their third campaign onto Indiegogo and raised $1,832,623.
A huge part of that was due to the Facebook Pixel. Just take a look at our Facebook Ads manager that shows $519,672 in revenue generated from $34,817.30 in ad spend (a 14.93X return on ad spend). This was largely due to our ability to optimize within Facebook’s platform.
We asked Jake Van Vorhis, Co-Founder of Airo Collective and creator of the Stealth Wallet his thoughts on Indiegogo and the Facebook Pixel. They raised $286,445 on Kickstarter and have already risen an additional $252,396 through Indiegogo InDemand.
What do Kickstarter creators think?
How is it working with Indiegogo’s platform that has the Facebook Pixel?
“Indiegogo has a smaller overall audience today than Kickstarter, but the Facebook Pixel actually makes up for that because it allows you to find and grow your own audience of people interested in what you are creating. There are tens of millions of people out there that have the risk tolerance to back a crowdfunding project and believe in a creator’s vision, but finding them is much more difficult without the use of a tool like the Facebook Pixel.”
If you are a creator, what should you do?
After personally supporting hundreds of product launches, I understand how difficult it is to launch a crowdfunding campaign. I’ve seen firsthand how much more effective these campaigns can be when creators have more insight into their advertising spend using the Facebook Pixel.
So if you are going to be launching a campaign and you see the value of having the Facebook Pixel, you should launch on Indiegogo. If you are going to launch on Kickstarter, then be ready to hire an agency to run your ads or come up with a workaround to track your advertising.
Won’t Kickstarter add the Facebook Pixel soon?
Short answer: probably not.
They’ve held off on adding it for 10 years. They don’t have the Facebook Pixel on their site for their own use. My guess is that they don’t feel Facebook aligns with their values as a company.
Kickstarter’s mission is to “…help bring creative projects to life. We measure our success as a company by how well we achieve that mission, not by the size of our profits.” Refusing to add the Facebook Pixel, I feel contradicts that mission. And they will most likely continue to contradict that mission for years to come.
