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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

#61

Post by nihonde »

traek wrote: post #53
nihonde wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, so how is the success of that funnel measured vis-a-vis other promotional channels? And are you able to demonstrate definitively that a visitor from FB concluded a sale? If so, how?

> OK, so how is the success of that funnel measured vis-a-vis other promotional channels? What difference does it make? If it’s profitable, it’s profitable. > And are you able to demonstrate definitively that a visitor from FB concluded a sale? If so, how? Through the variety of existing measurement solutions, or a custom solution. Twitter: https://business.twitter.com/en/help/campaign-measurement-an... Facebook: htt…

I think so because the entire history of advertising is based on hiding the ball in terms of ROI. How many sales does a Super Bowl ad generate? How many does a billboard generate?

For some extremely simplistic e-commerce conversions, such as for referrals to SaaS, it is easy to measure. For entire swathes of consumer products, the game is brand recognition and other soft metrics that drive huge ad spends. You can pretend it’s a science, but the incentives are all upside down for a true end-to-end ROI determination.

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

#62

Post by Santosh83 »

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…

> I suspect many many small business people feel > that same way, and will abandon Facebook as soon > as a less greedy alternative comes along.

I guess the tough part is getting the users on to another platform. Businesses will then naturally follow, but convincing the users to switch when they and everyone they know are entrenched in FB is hard to say the least.

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

#63

Post by JoshMnem »

jmgrosen wrote: post #54
JoshMnem wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's terrible. I hope that removing all of Facebook's software from a phone and using cash prevents that. I hope you're joking about the audio signal.

Not quite used for in-store advertising, but Google's "Nearby Messages API" does use "near-ultrasound" audio signals to communicate with other devices: https://developers.google.com/nearby/messages/overview . I don't know if it would work at a larger scale, though (maybe you couldn't allow dogs in your store!).

Also used for other purposes. Consumers would never consent to it if they understood it.

https://www.wired.com/2016/11/block-ultrasonic-signals-didnt...

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/11/beware-of-ads-th...

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/11/your-...

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

#64

Post by sdenton4 »

mbesto wrote: post #34
amelius wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you mean. It leaks the targeted group, that was the point.

I'm not sure I understand your point. It only leaks a subset of data (cat lovers who have an intent to buy paperclips) and is hardly valuable at scale to anyone for anything other than prospecting new customers.

I dunno, identifying groups like "Jew-Haters" seems useful beyond "prospecting new customers." For example, if the US government cared about tracking hate groups (as opposed to hiring them into the administration) they could use it to identify people to track.

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

#65

Post by [deleted] »

mbesto wrote: post #34
amelius wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you mean. It leaks the targeted group, that was the point.

I'm not sure I understand your point. It only leaks a subset of data (cat lovers who have an intent to buy paperclips) and is hardly valuable at scale to anyone for anything other than prospecting new customers.

[deleted]

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

#66

Post by sdenton4 »

nihonde wrote: post #61
traek wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OK, so how is the success of that funnel measured vis-a-vis other promotional channels? What difference does it make? If it’s profitable, it’s profitable. > And are you able to demonstrate definitively that a visitor from FB concluded a sale? If so, how? Through the variety of existing measurement solutions, or a custom solution. Twitter: https://business.twitter.com/en/help/campaign-measurement-an... Facebook: htt…

I think so because the entire history of advertising is based on hiding the ball in terms of ROI. How many sales does a Super Bowl ad generate? How many does a billboard generate? For some extremely simplistic e-commerce conversions, such as for referrals to SaaS, it is easy to measure. For entire swathes of consumer products, the game is brand recognition and other soft metrics that drive huge ad spends. You can pre…

A large number of companies are advertising /only/ online, and therefore have a pretty pure measurement of ROI via click tracking from the ad to purchase. It's one of the promises of internet advertising: there's sufficient surveillance logging to be able to see what's happening with much greater clarity than TV or billboards.

The other half of the promise is that you can target exactly the 'right' people. And this seems sketchier to me, as the article kinda gets at: as targeting complexity increases, it's harder to tell whether problems are arising due to market fit or issues in the targeting algorithms. In the old world, you bought ads on content, and now you buy ads on eyeballs: my guess is that there's an unexplored happy medium between the two.

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

#67

Post by ISL »

dingo_bat wrote: post #55
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…

I wonder where we'd be today if all this effort was focused on something like automatic cars. Instead of spam.

Spam, spam, spam, spam, cars, spam, and spam.

There's not too much spam in it.

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

#68

Post by golergka »

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.

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

How would you know, if only users who are actually annoyed are vocal about this?

I, for once, mostly see ads from the companies which I am already a happy and enthusiast customer of, for new versions of products that I enjoy. I even follow the industry news to know about new versions of these products and their reviews - and when I can't buy them, I genuinly enjoy watching youtube reviews about these products.

Do you honestly think that a person like me would be annoyed by these advertisements?

Don't you think that a _lot_ of people can say the same about their own product category that they're enthusiastic about? In my case, it's music software and hardware, but it could be cars, power tools, clothing or some other hobby that people enjoy spending their money on.

Sorry for the rant - I'm just tired of seeing the notion about how bad and annoying the ads are, when I see zero confirmation of this in my reality.

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

#69

Post by taneq »

lithos wrote: post #14
pcmaffey wrote: post #10

tldr; Outsource your relationship with your customers / audience at your own peril.

I figured it would've been to use a second middle man in front of the first middle man, since you won't stay sane the other way around.

Doesn't that just mean you have two unnecessary critical points of failure?
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