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How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Startups

nytimes.com

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Re: How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Startups

#21

Post by flashman »

denzil_correa wrote: post #18

> And Facebook has even been taking steps to influence offline sales, in order to bring traditional retailers into its orbit. In September, the social network introduced a tool that lets businesses with physical stores show ads to shoppers and their Lookalikes even if they visit the store but don’t buy anything. Does anyone know how this works?

"Facebook will also now know you visited a store based on a new feature that matches GPS, beacons, WiFi, radio signals, and cell towers with brick-and-mortar coordinates." [1] Basically harvesting data from your phone's sensors, where their app is installed.

And: "A new Facebook API, called the Offline Conversions API, works with a number of in-store sales systems from companies like Square and IBM to match their customer data with Facebook’s advertising data." [2]

(More science-fictiony: they could broadcast a local audio signal that fingerprints a particular location. Hmm, startup idea.)

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2016/06/14/facebook-knows/

Re: How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Startups

#22

Post by adambyrtek »

ballenf wrote: post #8

How Facebook determines ad placement in news feeds: > Millions of auctions take place every minute as users across Facebook load their feeds. ... The algorithm is constantly learning, using past results to inform how it weighs bids in the next auction. The intent, Facebook says, is to maximize value for everybody: to pair the advertiser with its likeliest customers, and to show ads that users want to see . And, of co…

Work on real-time ad auctions is definitely technically challenging, but I'm not convinced about the fun part, and I definitely wouldn't describe that as rewarding (unless you mean that in a purely financial sense).

Re: How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Startups

#23

Post by amelius »

ballenf wrote: post #8

How Facebook determines ad placement in news feeds: > Millions of auctions take place every minute as users across Facebook load their feeds. ... The algorithm is constantly learning, using past results to inform how it weighs bids in the next auction. The intent, Facebook says, is to maximize value for everybody: to pair the advertiser with its likeliest customers, and to show ads that users want to see . And, of co…

The problem is that it leaks information. If I place an ad for paperclips targeted at cat-lovers, then if you click on my ad and buy paperclips, I know that you are a cat-lover.

Re: How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Startups

#24

Post by d4l3k »

amelius wrote: post #23
ballenf wrote: post #8

How Facebook determines ad placement in news feeds: > Millions of auctions take place every minute as users across Facebook load their feeds. ... The algorithm is constantly learning, using past results to inform how it weighs bids in the next auction. The intent, Facebook says, is to maximize value for everybody: to pair the advertiser with its likeliest customers, and to show ads that users want to see . And, of co…

The problem is that it leaks information. If I place an ad for paperclips targeted at cat-lovers, then if you click on my ad and buy paperclips, I know that you are a cat-lover.

They already allow you to target groups like that. The algorithm doesn't leak anything more.

Re: How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Startups

#25

Post by nissimk »

flashman wrote: post #21
denzil_correa wrote: post #18

> And Facebook has even been taking steps to influence offline sales, in order to bring traditional retailers into its orbit. In September, the social network introduced a tool that lets businesses with physical stores show ads to shoppers and their Lookalikes even if they visit the store but don’t buy anything. Does anyone know how this works?

"Facebook will also now know you visited a store based on a new feature that matches GPS, beacons, WiFi, radio signals, and cell towers with brick-and-mortar coordinates." [1] Basically harvesting data from your phone's sensors, where their app is installed. And: "A new Facebook API, called the Offline Conversions API, works with a number of in-store sales systems from companies like Square and IBM to match their cus…

So that's why it destroys my battery.

Re: How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Startups

#26

Post by nihonde »

ballenf wrote: post #8

How Facebook determines ad placement in news feeds: > Millions of auctions take place every minute as users across Facebook load their feeds. ... The algorithm is constantly learning, using past results to inform how it weighs bids in the next auction. The intent, Facebook says, is to maximize value for everybody: to pair the advertiser with its likeliest customers, and to show ads that users want to see . And, of co…

And yet, advertisers still have no meaningful ROI, because it's never in the platform's interest to overachieve on this count.

And, users are still very much annoyed by distracting, irrelevant, or overly-targeted ads.

Re: How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Startups

#27

Post by ballenf »

adambyrtek wrote: post #22
ballenf wrote: post #8

How Facebook determines ad placement in news feeds: > Millions of auctions take place every minute as users across Facebook load their feeds. ... The algorithm is constantly learning, using past results to inform how it weighs bids in the next auction. The intent, Facebook says, is to maximize value for everybody: to pair the advertiser with its likeliest customers, and to show ads that users want to see . And, of co…

Work on real-time ad auctions is definitely technically challenging, but I'm not convinced about the fun part, and I definitely wouldn't describe that as rewarding (unless you mean that in a purely financial sense).

I was thinking in terms of having the results be immediately measured and quantified. It's kind of a luxury to have such a quick feedback loop. That's all I meant by rewarding, wasn't thinking in financial terms even though that now seems like a more obvious implication.

Re: How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Startups

#28

Post by sparkzilla »

alexbeloi wrote: post #19
sparkzilla wrote: post #9

I'm surprised the author didn't mention that Facebook has a history of screwing small business owners. A few years ago I spent more than $4000 on Facebook to build up about 4000 fans for a karaoke venue I ran at the time. I'd put some news out, and reach most of the fans. Then Facebook told me that to reach all of my fans I would now have to "boost" my posts, while the company simultaneously cut the organic reach to…

>They used the excuse that "people have to much stuff on their feed" but we all know that is BS. It's really not BS. People's feeds are flooded with content from tons of sources. Why would posts from company that I've 'liked' get guaranteed display when family/friends/friends-of-friends don't get that treatment. Moreover what if I've 'liked' 100+ bands/restaurants/celebrities/businesses/news-sources, they can easily…

It's not really a choice between a feed tuned to extract cash from small businesses and a newsletter though, is it? People were seeing my business's posts without any complaint until Facebook throttled the reach. I was also a Facebook user at that time, and didn't notice any particular problem either from pages that I follow. Now we get to see what Facebook thinks makes the most money for itself.

Re: How Facebook’s Oracular Algorithm Determines the Fates of Startups

#30

Post by maxpupmax »

nihonde wrote: post #26
ballenf wrote: post #8

How Facebook determines ad placement in news feeds: > Millions of auctions take place every minute as users across Facebook load their feeds. ... The algorithm is constantly learning, using past results to inform how it weighs bids in the next auction. The intent, Facebook says, is to maximize value for everybody: to pair the advertiser with its likeliest customers, and to show ads that users want to see . And, of co…

And yet, advertisers still have no meaningful ROI, because it's never in the platform's interest to overachieve on this count. And, users are still very much annoyed by distracting, irrelevant, or overly-targeted ads.

Why do you say that there's no meaningful ROI? I know a lot of marketers and advertisers who have built great businesses off of Facebook Ads.

Agree that we need to improve the quality of ads across the board.

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