Facebook reported fake numbers to advertisers

Facebooks corporate incentive is to get you to FEEL like your getting good value out of advertising on Facebook and to get you addicted to doing it.

Not to actually deliver results.

So don't trust any metric they show you, because even if its not a total fabrication it's still presented in a way to deceive you to think its better than it is.

Always monitor your ROI and always calculate it using your truly end goal (sales, or in the case of civil society some sort engagement off Facebook that's tightly bound to you mission). Likes, shares, comments and reach should NEVER be the goal. Even if FBs interface is trying to convince you otherwise.

Even more reason for us to be doubtful about FB's claims that small businesses would be decimated without FB's invasive tracking.

Facebook is repeatable shown to be lying, manipulating, failing to properly moderate their platform and having a general shady business practise, yet their stock price keeps climbing, they're not really punished in any meaningful way. It's disappointing that business are allowed to operate in this way, but I don't think anyone really care.

Clearly, FB was reaching some relevant users, since I picked some up as customers, but this was ridiculously padded with users outside the demographic that I was paying for, and I had to again figure out whether people were potential customers (re-qualify them). This left a sour taste and, as a result, I will not use Facebook advertising again.

I'm not sure why it's in Facebook's interest to lie like this.

Can you provide sources or evidence of this?

/s

And nothing of value was lost.

You build UIs in a way that improve your own metrics, which in this case is probably ad spend. They’ve likely run hundreds of A/B tests on the way ad data is displayed to try and optimize for that metric.

25k gets you more than 50k clicks, which would require less than a 0.002% conversion rate to produce no results.

Looks like you are doing your homework. Not everyone does though. Even if 60% of people who buy ads try to correlate the data, well there is a 40% that doesn't. That's easy money.

What surprises me is the coincidence that you ad drew the attentio of fake accounts. So, who preserves a network of fake accounts that will give you the false validation that you ad is working?

I see the benefit to FB that these fake accounts exist (and are NOT detected/eradicated).

What they're doing now is more like loot boxes.

They are being asked to get user consent to track, very different things.

But, I was extremely bothered about apparently real people contacting me who were well outside the demographic of people that I was paying for. I spent time dealing with them, and - as expected - they were unlikely to convert into customers.

I would have re-employed FB 10 times over if I didn't actively have to deal with so many contacts outside of what I was paying for.

I wonder what the ecological impact of all these dropshippers is.

A company that has a value system as crooked as Facebook's can't be trusted.

There is value to the consumers purchasing products - many of which are innovative and to be copied later once successful. It's a giant AB test.

There is also value to the business owners, small, medium and large.

You could apply that opinion to any product whether on shopify or even bigger open marketplaces like amazon, walmart

Isn't this the entire raison d'être of marketing, in general?

Retail is dying, malls are bankrupt.

COVID amplified this change and small business struggles. Even big corps are losing retail to online sales, GME is a meme example lol.

In it's good form it's learning how to design interfaces that are intuitive (i.e. they lead you to what you need). In it's bad form it's used to lead you to what the owners want (i.e. conversion to sales in it's purest form, or, in the case of Facebook, something much much worse).

I've been debating publishing a blog calling on the EU to stop using the utterly incorrect term "social network" and start using something more appropriate like "advertising platform" or, even more appropriately something that includes a nod to their primary factor of success - induction of emotional liability and reactivity in humans.

So, so, so many people don't. Idea of ROI is foreign to them. Facebook is going this whole "be your own advertiser" thing and ... well, it's working.

They see the pretty graphs and big number ("You reached 50k people!") and they thing it's fantastic. The idea that the conversion from 50k impressions could be 0% ... does not compute, because they imagine 50k people spending cognitive energy on their ad ... not 50k people scrolling past the ad never even noticing it.

Google is keyword only, and that's limited. Banner network display ads are useless.

The privacy debate is woefully lopsided by people who have never spent a dime marketing. I suggest all the startupy people on HN spend some time trying to get the word out and then they'll realize what the 'hard part' of the business is because it's not code.

Efficient advertising, which is to say getting in front of people who have a legit curiosity for your product with ads that are not distracting, is possible and ideal for everyone, but can only be done with at least some data.

The economy would grow literally by 1% more if we could get people connected with the things they need, when they need them and we'd all be better off.

@jariel can you share any resource for people looking to understand and dip their feet running their own FB ads?

Also, the pitfalls of FB ads are generally well known as well, we all know their numbers are a little ragged and we all know that 'likes' don't have much value in most scenarios.

Frankly, I would encourage anyone to stick $20 into FB ad platform and just run a few ads to drive some traffic to their own pages. It's a powerful and revelatory experience, advertising is a 'dark art' to too many people but it shouldn't be.

The moment you are in a position of having to market and sell a product, especially coming from another discipline, your world turns upside down and you see everything differently.

There is certainly a lot of information out there but much is generic, others are paid, and many are scams.

I personally have worked as a data scientist trying to assess the value generated by various advertising campaigns, and I personally found that the field is rife with egregious statistical misuse, usually because it was necessary to prove significant ROI on advertising.

[0] https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-h...

Facebook disagrees. It's even taken out full-page newspaper ads to tell people that if small businesses don't advertise (and permit invasive tracking) on Facebook, they'll go out of business and take the economy with them.

My observation has been that for many, it's both "don't" and "can't."

Facebook makes it easy for people to advertise. Auditing your Facebook buy is a different skill set that requires different thinking, and more time than most small business owners have. So they just trust Facebook isn't lying to them, the way that they trust the metrics that the local radio station salesman gives them. Except that the radio station salesman will lose his job if the numbers aren't right. There is no punishment for Facebook lying to its advertisers.

LOL. This is quite a comment on their own opinion of their ad platform's influence.

Keywords can be useless while the whole field can be useful. Which is to say noting that I'm searching for C++ and so advertising your compiler or programing class is useless - I'm already a programmer (I just forgot the exact spelling or order of arguments to the thing I need) and my company has chosen my compiler. However if you know I my hobby you can target me with your new drill bit and be better yet.

Though the largest advertisers don't care. Coke doesn't care that I don't like soda, they still want to target me just in case I'm called to bring drinks to some event. Ford can safely assume all Americans own a car and be close enough to right. Likewise everyone uses toilet paper (bidet users can be ignored) and soap (if you don't use soap you should be the highest target, though the ads perhaps should be different from those who use soap)

They remove OrderId's because they deem them "PII" (what!?) and just report number of conversions and conversion dollar amounts.

This, coupled with the complexity of referral tracking, lookback windows, browsers clearing cookies, etc... it becomes nearly (or completely!) impossible to validate any results from FB's ad platform.

Added to that, FB's ad platform's goal seems to be to spend your entire daily budget... every single day... regardless of ROAS. That's just absurd.

Trust Us - they say...

I don't buy from shopify or facebook anymore, and probably won't even if they clean up their act.

Ofent I feel marketing is some kind of scheme to keep money flowing to marketing departements.

Targeted ads are unequivocally more effective than non targeted ads, on the aggregate - there is no dispute other than at the margins.

Do you think that advertising makeup to the general population has the same effectiveness than advertising it to women? Or women who have shown an interest in makeup?

Ads are complicated and nuanced, but everyone in the industry already knows this.

There will always be science at the margins as we discover the means by which people truly engage, but otherwise, there is no arguing with core demographic targeting. It would be like completely non-technical people saying "Javascript is completely ineffective because of null ambiguity" whereas it's universally used, and the limitations of JS are recognized to all but the most junior developers.

Why should marketers influence how much privacy I have? Their incentive is for me to have as little privacy as possible.

This is like saying anti-war campaigns are woefully lopsided by people who have never sold munitions.

If only 10% of those typing C++ would ever be interested in a course, then those are not bad numbers.

More nuanced: at the 'non-targeted' threshold the ad would not make sense at all, total inefficiency. At the targeted threshold of being able to target at least C++ devs, the ad probably starts to work.

That is the difference between a viable business and not

That means engagement, value creation, sales, C++ developers trained and ready for the market. This is extremely good for society. We definitely want aspiring C++ devs hooked up with quality courses.

This anecdote very tangibly demonstrates the effectiveness of targeting for individual companies ... but it also points to the market efficiency that comes along with good advertising.

If you have a startup, and you can't reach any of your audience, you're dead. This notion of 'word of mouth' is ridiculous as a business plan, it's exceedingly rare, and usually it's not that anyhow in reality - it's usually a form of effective social marketing by the early movers. Clubhouse for example is being helped by the 'celebrity' of the VCs behind it - they don't have mass market following, but a very avid following in a certain niche that will come onto the platform. I'm noticing a lot of Marc Andreseen on Clubhouse, too much for a busy VC, but not too much for someone who's hyping his own investment and bringing in a lot of viewers, helping out a lot of panels.

The essential nature of basic targeting is not controversial, it's quite obvious at least at the most crude level.

This has always been a pet peeve of mine, and is clearly intentional by Facebook to prevent businesses from confirming and digging into results.

No other major advertising partner does this. Not Google Ads or Bing, not even Outbrain or Criteo. If these services report a conversion, they return to me the ID I passed to them for the conversion (even if last-click doesn't match).

Most stores buy and hold inventory, taking on the risk of not selling that inventory. Dropshippers send the order to someone else to fulfil, and are essentially glorified lead generators.

There are certainly good small businesses, both on Shopify and elsewhere, and some would be hurt to some small degree by this change. I'm simply arguing that the majority of business which would go broke without the use of the FB ad system tracking panopticon are not the sort of small business which are societally useful or that we should mourn their loss.

"Small businesses going bankrupt" typically is thought of a negative thing, but there are flavors of small businesses where it is really a net societal good.

Most targeted advertising, sure.

Targeted ads based on interests? Diet? General age range? Of course those will be more effective.

Showing me targeted ads for fitness products has been very effective, I have a yoga and a workout app I use that are both 100% due to targeted ads. I also have tried out various food products (keto cereal!) due to targeted ads.

Interest based ads work, if done well. Now that said, ads for stuff I already bought, eh, less so. Even worse if I buy something from an ad, get it home, unbox it, then google for help. Now I get ads trying to sell me the same product again. Though I'm not sure how horribly invasive ads would have to be to avoid that scenario.

I've generally found FB ads to be, honestly, useful at times.

What I really don't trust are kickstarter campaigns running YT ads. Shouts 'scam!' to me almost instantly.

Also that YT ad that was playing a few months ago for the $20 adjustable dumbbell set that went to a super shady site. (Normally adjustable dumbbells go for $500+...) It appeared to be a fake storefront, but YT kept happily running the ad day after day.

It was well targeted though. :)

The difference in effectiveness between different visuals and ad copy ranged from "no one clicked this" to "10% conversion after hitting my landing page."

For the right audience, with the right campaign, FB ads do work.

But you have to play around, and what does work might not be intuitive.

Also I found out that the ad copy that worked on FB didn't work on Reddit, and vis versa.

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/embarrassing-and-damaging...

quoted ..

The technology site Silicon Alley Insider got hold of some of the messages and, this past spring, posted the transcript of a conversation between Zuckerberg and a friend, outlining how he was planning to deal with Harvard Connect:

FRIEND: so have you decided what you are going to do about the websites? ZUCK: yea i’m going to fuck them ZUCK: probably in the year ZUCK: *ear

In another exchange leaked to Silicon Alley Insider, Zuckerberg explained to a friend that his control of Facebook gave him access to any information he wanted on any Harvard student:

ZUCK: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard ZUCK: just ask ZUCK: i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns FRIEND: what!? how’d you manage that one? ZUCK: people just submitted it ZUCK: i don’t know why ZUCK: they “trust me” ZUCK: dumb fucks

That's certainly selling drop-shippers short.

They provide products, at prices people are willing to pay for convenience, trustability, etc. They handle complaints, shoulder the risk of returns and/or damaged in shipment items, pay for their own advertising/marketing and more.

Many Tier-1 distributors enjoy their relationship with drop-shippers... and many customers enjoy that very same relationship too.

Your privacy is not compromised by Facebook. Nobody is harmed. There are zero cases of people being hurt or their lives being denigrated due to targeted advertising.

FB is not perfect, I think there are better ways, I don't like them, but it's hyperbolic to suggest there is material systematic harm. Nobody is really losing that much.

And ROAS is Google’s main measure of return, it’s a poor metric because it has nothing to do with profit.

Do you and I live in different universes? The one I live in blamed FB for allowing 3rd partner apps to download loads of personal information, and then use it to send targeted adds to influence an election. Also, adds spreading misinformation about Covid 19. At the early part of FB, kids could upload pictures with their EXIF data that included GPS coordinates- which were then used for kidnapping or serial molestation.

With location tracking for adds, no one even needs a legitimate reason to buy location data. Thus can be used for thugs to track down and kill people they don't like.

Offer something free, like an ebook, webinar, etc. and gather email addresses to access it.

This gives you a chance to follow up and grow your email lists. So even if they don’t buy, you at least get a lead. When you just buy a click, you always gotta hit a Homer. Figure out it a way to make base hits count.

Literally just basic demographics, plus a few interest points ... that's all I think we need to do well of those could be reliable.

It’s not as accessible but there are a few good integrations that make it easier.

On the first point - they just don't know that much about us. That's what the whole post is about (!) They were lying advertisers ad to the probabilistic estimates of who we are.

Go here: https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated?hl=en

Google will show what they know about you if you have that on. It's not very accurate at all. It's very fuzzy. For me they have wrong age, a lot of wrong interests.

So they surprisingly don't know a lot, just because someone clicks on an add ... that is not a lot of information - there's so many reasons we click on ads. Google thinks I'm into cars and I don't even drive, I hate cars!

As for basic targeting - it's mostly what advertisers need. So age, education, income, zip code (or zip code classification), rough location would be great. Plus just a few, solid interests (real ones, not estimated) - and that would be a big step forward for ads.

So yes - our privacy is fairly aggressively invaded at the same time they can only glean so much from it. Seems like a Paradox.

Do you have any evidence to back this up? I can't find any published literature where Facebook has hinted this, including this paper [0] saying:

> As expected the most important thing is to have the right features: those capturing historical information about the user or ad dominate other types of features.

0. https://research.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/practical...

Nobody is harmed by virtue of invasion of their privacy.

Ads, which relate to misinformation about COVID and elections are completely separate issue, and basically have nothing to do with the detailed nature of targeting.

'Harmful Ads' can be on any platform in the world - Google, Television, Magazines, Billboards.

There is no harm to you due to the fact that FB has a 90% chance of knowing your gender, age, and a couple of your interests. None.

But for most products it's rather easy to tell if you're getting the value you expect out of them, not so much here.

I mean you can start experiments with statistically significant results branching from that, but when you are tight on budget, and just want to start out, it might be better to just randomly find something which can get the ball rolling?