Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 139 posts

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#121

Post by mercer »

throwaway198374 wrote: post #120
ghshephard wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two ways to measure brand awareness - polling, and are people buying your product. And you run many, many programs on lots of channels in different demographics, and geographies - and see which program is most effective.

The polling is often done by randomly inserting Vizu polls into the page somewhere and hoping someone fills them out. Of course hardly anyone does - who can be bothered? Still, they've managed to establish themselves as a credible third-party verifier (not saying they actually are credible - I know sometimes people running the campaign will fill these out to show that the campaign is working) Also, I'm not saying it'…

Okay, so this question is one I'd never ask in 'real life' without knowing you very well first, but I suppose it's different here because you're anonymous and free not to answer. But apologies anyways if it seems rude.

Why do you do this work? You clearly know what you're doing; perhaps you're very good. And I won't presume to know your reasons or the underlying belief system that may or may not support it.

But from my personal perspective, it sounds like hell to spend my productive days essentially just selling stuff. Is it that you believe in what you're selling? Is it that in your moral framework being good at this job trumps what seems like a bad way to spend your time?

I'm truly asking out of curiosity, by the way. I'm a front-end developer and a significant portion of my work, when I work, is essentially dressing up ads with websites that don't add up to much of value (within the parameters of my own perspective on life). So judging you would be hypocrisy.

But I'm actively unhappy about it, and any excitement I show involves the craft, and I'm looking into ways to apply my craft in ways meaningful to me. And I'm curious to know how this works for you.

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#122

Post by miles_matthias »

onion2k wrote: post #86
miles_matthias wrote: post #62

At my company we're realizing how great of an advertising channel Facebook is, in the fact that we can immediately narrow down our target audience to people who have liked a certain page. It's just very weird to me that a social network that everyone my age and younger never use. I never, ever post to Facebook and rarely look at it because it's just my family on it. I connect with friends over snapchat and meet new p…

There a psychological bias called the "false consensus effect" whereby people overestimate how similar other people are to themselves. It's backed up by things like confirmation bias where you tend to socialise with people similar to yourself so it feels like most people really are like you. The simple reality is that you just don't know enough people to draw any statistically relevant conclusions about society. It m…

Great point!

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#123

Post by shostack »

thenomad wrote: post #103
nl wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No details (embargoes etc), but the short version is that videos ads work.

Interesting. Is that true even if you're only able to consider last-touch rather than the whole picture? (For example, if you're a performance marketer working on commission for leads or sales.) I've not yet seen spectacular results for video, speaking as someone in the above category (some of the time) but my hunch has long been it can be very effective.

I'd be shocked if this was the case given how much of video is pre-roll and the "view but don't click" nature of it. You'd have to have a pretty friggin' compelling CTA to get someone to click it and drop your cookie.

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#124

Post by shostack »

nl wrote: post #99
shostack wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you share any details of the study you are involved in?

No details (embargoes etc), but the short version is that videos ads work.

Now you've piqued my interest as I'm in the middle of ramping up for a product-focused video ad test.

Any other hints you can share without violating agreements on the path to success and measuring success?

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#125

Post by shostack »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #88
shostack wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on why you think Google wouldn't know before FB? Many (most?) people don't go posting anything about pregnancy before for ~3 months traditionally, and odds are you are going to be searching for symptoms when you first notice something is wrong health-wise. When a doctor or test confirms you are pregnant, I'd be willing to bet that users are immediately pulling up their favorite search engine to figu…

The odds are very good that people start discussing things like pregnancy in Messenger at the same time they start googling symptoms. Public posts aren't all FB has available.

That's actually a great point that I forgot about. It is scary to think about how they are mining personal conversations like that, particularly about something so sensitive.

Could easily lead to a situation like when Target outed a girl as pregnant to her father [1].

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2012/02/16/how-targe...

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#126

Post by mbesto »

shostack wrote: post #78
mbesto wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you familiar with conversion tracking? You can attribute conversion (checkout, sign-ups, etc) with clicking or viewing of FB ads. More details here: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/460491677335370

I appreciate you sharing your information as it came across as an honest attempt to be helpful, however I think you might find it helpful to read this post by Avinash Kaushik [1] and then reread my post. I do digital advertising for a living, and that post is what I recommend to all who are new to the concept of cross-channel attribution as it is a very complex topic from both a data, math, and business standpoint. E…

No worries. I am actually in conversations with a client right now about multi-channel attribution, as I know it's a problem. The reason I responded the way I did was about your comment here:

> If FB can provide advertisers with the tools to more definitively say "this is making you money" and not just "oh, we summed up all these random stats and call it Engagement--look at the shiny engagement metric!" I'm confident they would find advertisers even more willing to open their wallets, shift spend away from the GDN and exchanges, and stop questioning or caring about click fraud since it would be a self-correcting issue (ie. high levels of click fraud would in theory result in lower perceived incremental lift if proper analysis was conducted).

Engagement metrics to me are much more about brand awareness then it is converting sales, so I didn't understand why you would point to engagement metrics when questioning tools that drive sales. Are you saying that you use conversion based ads on FB and aren't confident that their attribution window provides a highly accurate view of their performance?

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#127

Post by brandnewlow »

throwaway198374 wrote: post #120
ghshephard wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two ways to measure brand awareness - polling, and are people buying your product. And you run many, many programs on lots of channels in different demographics, and geographies - and see which program is most effective.

The polling is often done by randomly inserting Vizu polls into the page somewhere and hoping someone fills them out. Of course hardly anyone does - who can be bothered? Still, they've managed to establish themselves as a credible third-party verifier (not saying they actually are credible - I know sometimes people running the campaign will fill these out to show that the campaign is working) Also, I'm not saying it'…

Don't forget that a lot of this is often driven by the brand managers who want to grow their budgets. If it turns out that they can't spend $1m on "45-50 y/o women in Florida" in a quarter, then their budget will get trimmed appropriately, reducing their stature and sway in the organization. The fraud problem in digital advertising is a hard cycle to break when there's people on the brand-side helping encourage it.

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#128

Post by throwaway198374 »

mercer wrote: post #121
throwaway198374 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The polling is often done by randomly inserting Vizu polls into the page somewhere and hoping someone fills them out. Of course hardly anyone does - who can be bothered? Still, they've managed to establish themselves as a credible third-party verifier (not saying they actually are credible - I know sometimes people running the campaign will fill these out to show that the campaign is working) Also, I'm not saying it'…

Okay, so this question is one I'd never ask in 'real life' without knowing you very well first, but I suppose it's different here because you're anonymous and free not to answer. But apologies anyways if it seems rude. Why do you do this work? You clearly know what you're doing; perhaps you're very good. And I won't presume to know your reasons or the underlying belief system that may or may not support it. But from…

It's a reasonable question.

I am not against advertising per-se. I think there is some truth to the idea that advertising keeps the Internet free. It's also a part of the sales cycle that drives the economy, and keeps a lot of people in work. I think the fear of tracking is a little overblown, too - everything I've seen about tracking in my company is extremely focused on keeping user data anonymous (at least as much due to fear of a lawsuit and bad PR as out of ethical standards). I've never heard anyone suggest doing anything with that data other than trying to use it to deliver better results for our clients. We have massive amounts of tracking data, but we don't know who anyone is or where they live. We seem to try hard to keep it that way. Now, it may be possible for someone with sufficient access to take the data and figure out names and addresses, but we never even let that data into the system, and we have stringent, externally audited controls, so it would have to be a malicious act. You'd be out of a job in a heartbeat if you got caught doing that.

So, I don't have a moral problem with the way my company in particular is using data. I think the fact that your mobile phone operator will sell your location is much more concerning. There are a lot companies in the ad tech space, and I'd bet a lot of them care a lot less than we do about personal user data.

On the issue of fraud in particular I can truthfully say that I've only just become aware of it. I am an engineer on a small component of the platform. Communication between departments is not great, so I have been disconnected from the reality of how campaigns are run. It wasn't until I looked into our data while diagnosing another issue, and subsequently reached out to account management, sales etc that I realized what was going on. That was in the last few weeks. Since then the issue has blown up and we're working on a plan to deal with it. Whether that plan has teeth and is enacted will tell a lot about the willingness of the company to do the right thing for our customers. I'm cautiously optimistic, but that optimism is tempered by the general negative attitude toward transparency that I've seen from leadership in the company.

I also am planning to leave the company before the end of the year. This is as much for personal reasons as work ones. The company is dysfunctional and oftentimes its own worst enemy. I wouldn't work for a company like this again, and would ideally stay out of ad tech entirely.

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#129

Post by throwaway198374 »

brandnewlow wrote: post #127
throwaway198374 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The polling is often done by randomly inserting Vizu polls into the page somewhere and hoping someone fills them out. Of course hardly anyone does - who can be bothered? Still, they've managed to establish themselves as a credible third-party verifier (not saying they actually are credible - I know sometimes people running the campaign will fill these out to show that the campaign is working) Also, I'm not saying it'…

Don't forget that a lot of this is often driven by the brand managers who want to grow their budgets. If it turns out that they can't spend $1m on "45-50 y/o women in Florida" in a quarter, then their budget will get trimmed appropriately, reducing their stature and sway in the organization. The fraud problem in digital advertising is a hard cycle to break when there's people on the brand-side helping encourage it.

Yes, this is 100% accurate. No-one wants their budget to shrink. Agencies will come to us at the end of the year with unspent client budget that they really don't want to give back, lest they be given less to spend the next year.

Re: Facebook Climbs to 1.59B Users, Beats Q4 Estimates with $5.8B Revenue

#130

Post by nl »

thenomad wrote: post #103
nl wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No details (embargoes etc), but the short version is that videos ads work.

Interesting. Is that true even if you're only able to consider last-touch rather than the whole picture? (For example, if you're a performance marketer working on commission for leads or sales.) I've not yet seen spectacular results for video, speaking as someone in the above category (some of the time) but my hunch has long been it can be very effective.

We consider the whole picture, using paid participants and heavily instrumented browsers (including eye-tracking etc) on both mobile and desktop.

Clearly there are still holes in the methodology, but it's at least as good as I've ever seen done.

Post reply on HN