Did Facebook Inflate Its Advertising Metrics? (gizmodo.com) 53
Business Insider reports:
Facebook executives knew for years its "potential reach" advertising metric was inflated and overruled an employee warning to adjust it to avoid a revenue hit, plaintiffs of a lawsuit against the social media giant argued in an unredacted court filing.
Gizmodo writes: In a nutshell, this class action suit, which was first filed back in 2018, alleges that Facebook massaged figures for "Potential Reach" — an estimate that Facebook gives its advertisers for the number of people that might see their ad — to goad advertisers into spending more money on the platform, all in the hopes of reaching the people that Facebook had promised. These filings detail that some of Facebook's top brass, including Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, were fully aware that the company spent years exaggerating the number of eyeballs its advertisers could reach...
Thanks to these unsealed filings, we know just how inflated some of those figures were. Here's an example: in 2018, Facebook told its advertisers that it had a Potential Reach of 230 million adults across the U.S., out of the 250 million adults that were counted by U.S. census data that year. But according to a 2018 Pew Research study, only about 68% (or 170 million adults) actually use the platform at all. Sandberg acknowledged in an internal email that "she'd known about problems with Potential Reach for years." But she repeatedly shot down employee's attempts to rectify those figures, according to the filing.
Internally, employees acknowledged that while the product bills itself as an estimate for how many "people" your ad might reach, it is, at best, an estimate for the number of accounts — including the untold numbers of fakes and duplicates. Some employees even ran the numbers in 2018, just to see what would happen if known duplicate accounts were cut out of Potential Reach, and saw a 10% drop in the numbers advertisers were given. Facebook chose not to cut them...
The suit points out that numbers Facebook continues to give its advertisers make even less sense, like telling them it can reach "100 million" 18-to-34 year old's across the country. Census data shows there's in fact only 76 million of them — and we know not all of them use Facebook.
Gizmodo writes: In a nutshell, this class action suit, which was first filed back in 2018, alleges that Facebook massaged figures for "Potential Reach" — an estimate that Facebook gives its advertisers for the number of people that might see their ad — to goad advertisers into spending more money on the platform, all in the hopes of reaching the people that Facebook had promised. These filings detail that some of Facebook's top brass, including Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, were fully aware that the company spent years exaggerating the number of eyeballs its advertisers could reach...
Thanks to these unsealed filings, we know just how inflated some of those figures were. Here's an example: in 2018, Facebook told its advertisers that it had a Potential Reach of 230 million adults across the U.S., out of the 250 million adults that were counted by U.S. census data that year. But according to a 2018 Pew Research study, only about 68% (or 170 million adults) actually use the platform at all. Sandberg acknowledged in an internal email that "she'd known about problems with Potential Reach for years." But she repeatedly shot down employee's attempts to rectify those figures, according to the filing.
Internally, employees acknowledged that while the product bills itself as an estimate for how many "people" your ad might reach, it is, at best, an estimate for the number of accounts — including the untold numbers of fakes and duplicates. Some employees even ran the numbers in 2018, just to see what would happen if known duplicate accounts were cut out of Potential Reach, and saw a 10% drop in the numbers advertisers were given. Facebook chose not to cut them...
The suit points out that numbers Facebook continues to give its advertisers make even less sense, like telling them it can reach "100 million" 18-to-34 year old's across the country. Census data shows there's in fact only 76 million of them — and we know not all of them use Facebook.
Trusting facebook on anything (Score:5, Insightful)
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Unfortunately way too many people trust professional liars like facebook are much more common than people who trust strangers with their kids..
Re:Trusting facebook on anything (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately way too many people trust professional liars like facebook are much more common than people who trust strangers with their kids..
I'll probably get pounced upon for being an elitist, but we kinda screwed up when we made it so easy to get on the internet that the most stupid among us could do it. I mean back in the day, we had kooks and weirdos, but at least none of us believed the world was flat.
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Unfortunately that ship sailed in September of 1993..
Re: Trusting facebook on anything (Score:2)
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The same thing was said when Windows was introduced, that's when idiots starting using computers and the reason we now have incomprehensible things like a scan of a printed page embedded into a PDF, or a Word document with only two sentences attached to an email.
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The same thing was said when Windows was introduced, that's when idiots starting using computers and the reason we now have incomprehensible things like a scan of a printed page embedded into a PDF, or a Word document with only two sentences attached to an email.
And we've onnly dumbed things down worse since then. It's not like there wasn't stupid and evil people back in the day, but now we have people so stupid that they are lucky to get their shoes on in the morning. And their commentary is given the same gravitas as sensible people.
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On the hand it's Facebook so of course they did this... On the other hand Betteridge says it must be false... Gah.
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Seriously? So the joke is that your 10 year old male child would be raped if you trusted him like Facebook? Why did you add the male part? Is raping little boys funny to you but not little girls?
And it is +5 Insightful? WTF is wrong with you people.
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Seriously? So the joke is that your 10 year old male child would be raped if you trusted him like Facebook? Why did you add the male part? Is raping little boys funny to you but not little girls?
And it is +5 Insightful? WTF is wrong with you people.
No, it isn't a joke at all, and quite frankly - your triggering is a little odd there.
An astute person who isn't prone to flying into fits of spittle flecked rage might have done a little search on the name "Jerry Sandusky."
He was an assistant football coach at a University who also had a charity for at risk boys. And it turns out that he liked to diddle kids. Only boys, He only liked prepubescent males. He didn't like females, therefore no mention of females.
And It's not funny to me at all - just as
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Then stop sticking screwdrivers in power outlets!
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In the U.S., you can safely stick screwdrivers (or anything metal) into power outlets. If it's in the hot pole, you better be insulated from the metal. If it's in neutral, you can safely touch that.
Don't "woosh" me. I got it.
the game is crooked (Score:2)
Re:the game is crooked (Score:5, Interesting)
(I wanted to quote Bill the Cat, but Slashdot wouldn't let me. "too much like ascii art".) How many people explicitly ignore FB ads? Or ignore all on-line ads? Do we have real data on various advertising platforms and their effectiveness? Recent reports I've seen imply that targeting ads is not worth the effort.
There's data (Score:3)
The last I heard online advertising works for brands (e.g. it can make you think about Coke & McDonalds) but not for individual products (i.e. it won't help your plumbing or computer repair business).
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Well, there are Google adverts too and they are kind of very reaching too..
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Is it really? What's the worldwide population vs the number of active Facebook accounts once you remove fakes/duplicates?
I'm guessing that ads on Google are reaching a far wider market than Facebook, especially when you consider that Facebook is trying to guess with a buttload of screwed-up metrics what ads to show you vs Google which knows exactly what you're searching for because you're the one who filled the search field.
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Don't be silly. The advertisers own Facebook, where the advertisers go, so goes their monies. No monies, no Facebook, it dies pretty quick, as revenue collapse, REAL QUICK.
Producers need to get togethor with the governments they own and redo the whole advertising metric. Personal I would make advertising corporations legally liable for the advertisements they show.
They should be law, be required to check the qualities of the product and ensure it matches the advertise, fail and they are legally liable for
Is Facebook Evil? (Score:2)
same answer
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That is actually a more interesting question than it might seem at first glance.
That is: Where do you draw a line between evil and immoral.
All big corporations are clearly immoral at least in some way. But what behavior crosses over to actual evil for a corporation?
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There is no line between evil and immoral.
Immorality is evil.
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Define evil:
A force which motivates humans to act anti-social.
Vague enough to apply to the supernatural as well as emergent behavior (which looks intelligent enough to personify and that would lead to people creating super natural beings attribute as the singular intelligent source.)
It also applies to "it's only business" and the many other excuses; especially, the Little Eichmann who are externalized from direct responsibility and exposure to the anti-social acts. The exposure can be made into tolerable co
Of course there are 100M (Score:2)
Besting Betteridge (Score:3)
Betteridge's Law on Opposite Day (Score:2)
"Did Facebook Inflate Its Advertising Metrics?"
Yes.
Next inane question, please.
Did (don't care) inflate its (don't care)? (Score:2)
No soup for you! NEXT!
nice formulation of betteridge's law (Score:2)
>Facebook Knowingly Profited Off Junk Ad Efficacy Estimates, Lawsuit Claims
The article headline is much more direct about the whole situation.
Zuck taking a leaf from Trump's book (Score:3)
Inflate values when wanting money (ad income or bank loans)
deflate values when paying taxes.
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Trump and his followers are preparing for him to be sworn in as No 46 on 4th March (or thereabouts)
He just won't lie down and go away. Neither will his disciples like Bobert, Cruz, Graham and Taylor-cohen and the rest of MAGA.
FYI, I'm just a casual observer from outside the USA. The goings-on in the USA is pure entertainment to the rest of the world.
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Did someone inflate Zuckerbergs' head? (Score:2)
Human Nature (Score:3)
After being an employee or contractor for roughly 30 different companies, I can attest that such "spinnage" is common. The pressure to sell results in the production of "inventive realities". It's not unlike the publish-or-perish pressure in academia. As pressure is cranked up, people look for shortcuts and ways to spin reality. That's just human nature in a competitive environment.
In AI, forms of cheating often occur [forbes.com]. For example, it was discovered that a lot of images of certain specialties had a common watermark in them from one or few photographers who specialize in that topic. The AI keyed on the watermarks to improve guesses.
Humans, being giant neural nets, similarly appear more than willing to find and use shortcuts to raw merit & accuracy if the probability of being punished is not high enough. Being fired is often not seen as enough risk because they can find another job at a another company, including those companies who care more about results than honesty.
During the dark IT days of the dot-com crash, I even participated in slimage out of fear of being fired. I had a new family to take care of and felt survival was more important than honesty. I was looking for a new gig to escape the madness, but couldn't bring myself to outright quit first.
I Can Attest (Score:3)
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My wife has had similar results to you. Was a waste of money.
Print publications use "readers per copy" (Score:1)
Print publications (magazines and newspapers) use a measure called readers per copy to state what their circulation is.
When they say "Our magazine has 12,000 readers!" it doesn't mean that they sell 12,000 copies of that magazine every month. They count each copy multiple times to come up with "readers", and their multiple ranges from two to twenty, thirty or fifty or more.
Really. The "12,000 readers" probably means they sold 6000 copies at the most, and maybe less than 1000 copies were actually sold. Nu
Sure (Score:2)
She has large ...tracts of land.
Well... (Score:1)
What if Facebook's active user base was halved one (Score:2)
Facebook Metric Liars (Score:3)
100 million 18-34 year olds? (Score:1)
Bots welcome... (Score:2)
That was pretty much its business model and the ultimate reason why it will always be a source of disinformation.
It probably would have went the way of myspace around 2014 if it wasn't for all the bots joining.