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Facebook managers trash their own ad targeting in unsealed remarks

theintercept.com

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Re: Facebook managers trash their own ad targeting in unsealed remarks

#91

Post by Invictus0 »

mjburgess wrote: post #5

This shows the limitations of ML: facebook has incredible amounts of preference & behaviour data on its users; and can't even meet incredibly generic categories such as "high-earner, college educated, etc.". The reason we think we're in an "AI" boom is 90% these ad. companies hyping their own abilities (an identical strategy to that of the initial boom in the 50s). What we call "AI" today is just an associative house…

I disagree that this shows anything about ML at all. The particular example here--high-earner, college educated-- should be trivial to deduce without machine learning. Just to start, many users add their college directly to their profile. How is it possible that they can't even get that right?

Re: Facebook managers trash their own ad targeting in unsealed remarks

#92

Post by amelius »

matkoniecz wrote: post #85
amelius wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People obsess too much over minor conveniences. I don't care about driving. It still takes the same amount of time. What I care more about is cooking. I'd rather have that one solved, as it would actually save me time. (No, I'm not looking for restaurants, meal delivery services or microwave meals).

> I don't care about driving. It still takes the same amount of time. If it would be automated, the you would be able to use this time for something else rather than driving.

In theory yes, in practice mostly no.

Re: Facebook managers trash their own ad targeting in unsealed remarks

#93

Post by reissbaker »

"Crap" is a relative term; 41% (many years ago) was still a lot better than putting out an ad in the New York Times. FB ads aren't perfect, but IME they're a lot better than anything else — the only purchases I've made off ads in the last few years have been from targeted IG/FB ads, and quite a few friends have mentioned the same.

Sort of ironic how the Intercept is apparently capable of believing both that:

* FB is completely incompetent at targeting "to the point of being fraudulent," and can't hit the broad side of a barn with a targeted ad buy, and

* FB is filled with malicious targeting geniuses, whose ability to pinpoint target ads to anyone with incredible precision has made a mockery of democracy.

(Disclaimer: I recently left IG, although I didn't work on anything ads-related.)

Re: Facebook managers trash their own ad targeting in unsealed remarks

#94

Post by breakfastduck »

giarc wrote: post #2

This doesn't surprise me at all. I've run a few, albeit very small, campaigns on FB. I set up targetting (occupation and geography) and I would get people outside of my target 'liking' my ad. I'd reach out anyways to ask if they are interested in my product and they would never respond. I oftened wondered if they were just fake/bot accounts to make it look like my ads were getting attention. I'm glad some company has…

Anecdotally, facebook adverts are effective. They may not be able to be tracked from facebook, but I've had plenty of people recommend a product in person that they 'saw on facebook' but never liked or interacted with.

They're probably no more effective than billboards, or something though. That may be different with everyone stuck at home!

Re: Facebook managers trash their own ad targeting in unsealed remarks

#95

Post by gonehome »

ma2rten wrote: post #69
nopriorarrests wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course it was awful. It was 1997. But you can't claim that something "wasn't possible 5 years" ago, if 7 years ago said feature was included in inexpensive consumer product (LG TV). I'm not acting cynical, but it's tiresome for me to see people who claim that 20-30 years ago we all were living in a caves and catching bugs with wooden sticks, and now boom, ML! Regarding "something truly different", well, my persona…

It matters if it actually works and if it works broadly or just for limited use cases. As I said in the original comment, I think that you will see many applications in the near future. The last 5 years have been focused on research (comparable to 1990-1995), only now are we getting ready for commercial applications.

Yeah - entire classes of problems went from unsolvable to solved. Some of that is in the consumer space and some of it is not.

I feel like an AGI could accidentally wipe out half of humanity and there would still be people commenting on HN about how the exact same technology already existed in a roomba seven years ago.

Re: Facebook managers trash their own ad targeting in unsealed remarks

#96

Post by stickfigure »

tsimionescu wrote: post #54
stickfigure wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess there's two ways of looking at this: * 40% of targeted viewers didn't match "high-earner, college educated", the system is crap! or * 60% of targeted viewers did match "high-earner, college educated", that's amazing! I dunno... do you have a better way of reaching those targeted viewers? Do you have a better way of measuring results than abstract page views? Depending on the context, 60% could be very worth i…

The emails claim the FB employee said 41% precision - so they only reached the targetted viewers 41% of the time, or 59% of the time an ad for high-earner, college educated reached someone who wasn't a high earner and/or college educated (I'm unclear whether it's supposed to be 'and' of 'or', but it's largely irrelevant).

In the third paragraph of the article: But nearly 40 percent of the people who saw Investor Village’s ad either lacked a college degree, did not make $250,000 per year, or both, the company claims.

Re: Facebook managers trash their own ad targeting in unsealed remarks

#97

Post by JKCalhoun »

reissbaker wrote: post #93

"Crap" is a relative term; 41% (many years ago) was still a lot better than putting out an ad in the New York Times. FB ads aren't perfect, but IME they're a lot better than anything else — the only purchases I've made off ads in the last few years have been from targeted IG/FB ads, and quite a few friends have mentioned the same. Sort of ironic how the Intercept is apparently capable of believing both that: * FB is…

> the only purchases I've made off ads in the last few years have been from targeted IG/FB ads

Likely most of the ads in the last few years have been targeted ones.

Re: Facebook managers trash their own ad targeting in unsealed remarks

#98

Post by nopriorarrests »

reissbaker wrote: post #93

"Crap" is a relative term; 41% (many years ago) was still a lot better than putting out an ad in the New York Times. FB ads aren't perfect, but IME they're a lot better than anything else — the only purchases I've made off ads in the last few years have been from targeted IG/FB ads, and quite a few friends have mentioned the same. Sort of ironic how the Intercept is apparently capable of believing both that: * FB is…

How true. "Those evil Trump campaign staffers turned election in his favor using amazing evil micro-targeting FB techniques which are complete scam and do not work at all".

Pretty coherent point of view.

Re: Facebook managers trash their own ad targeting in unsealed remarks

#99

Post by nopriorarrests »

gonehome wrote: post #95
ma2rten wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It matters if it actually works and if it works broadly or just for limited use cases. As I said in the original comment, I think that you will see many applications in the near future. The last 5 years have been focused on research (comparable to 1990-1995), only now are we getting ready for commercial applications.

Yeah - entire classes of problems went from unsolvable to solved. Some of that is in the consumer space and some of it is not. I feel like an AGI could accidentally wipe out half of humanity and there would still be people commenting on HN about how the exact same technology already existed in a roomba seven years ago.

Honest question, no snark --- which consumer space problems were solved, if I don't play Go and don't have FB account to recognize me on a group photos (both of these two statements are true)?

Re: Facebook managers trash their own ad targeting in unsealed remarks

#100

Post by Zelphyr »

ma2rten wrote: post #29
mjburgess wrote: post #5

This shows the limitations of ML: facebook has incredible amounts of preference & behaviour data on its users; and can't even meet incredibly generic categories such as "high-earner, college educated, etc.". The reason we think we're in an "AI" boom is 90% these ad. companies hyping their own abilities (an identical strategy to that of the initial boom in the 50s). What we call "AI" today is just an associative house…

I can't speak for other people, but the reason that I think we are in an AI boom has nothing to do with online advertising. It is that computers can now recognize images, translate language, have conversations, generate articles, make realistic looking pictures, play the game of go, solve protein folding, generate realistic text to speech, recognize voices. All these things were not possible 5 years ago. Every year t…

I don’t disagree but OP’s argument is, to me, why AI isn’t going to put programmers out of a job anytime soon.
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