9 ms·

Data points that Facebook uses to target ads

240 points by suprgeek 10y ago

newsat13 10y ago
Does anyone know of any startups or upcoming projects that are trying to compete with Facebook (i.e building a social network?). I still haven't managed to wrap my head around how exactly facebook makes money. Do so many people actually click on ads? And this somehow makes billions? I find it very hard to imagine (for myself).
- sfifs 10y ago
  The objective of much of the advertizing money in the world is to get impressions and not clicks. Clicks are chased by companies who are primarily selling products and services on the web - and that is really a small part of the economy. Think of companies like beverage giants, car manufacturers, large consumer products giants, financial institutions etc or almost anyone who advertizes on superbowl on TV. Their primary objective is to build awareness & a certain brand perception among a large segment of consumers so that when you buy their category, you will choose their brand. Coca Cola doesn't necessarily want you to buy it that instant online you see the ad (though if you do, it's a nice bonus). Rather the objective is to build an equity that will make you think of yourself as a "Coke person" instead of say "Pepsi person". Remember that bulk of the advertizing money in the world comes from such players. They pay facebook a premium for being able to deterministically show your advertizing to a given target audience.
- freax4evar 10y ago
  There's diaspora [0] and GNU social [1], but those haven't yet managed to pop up into the mainstream. Network effects should ensure that they do not anytime soon. With that said, the mounting controversy over Facebook and Twitter's moderation may end up pushing marginalized groups into these platforms. [0]: https://diasporafoundation.org/ https://diasporafoundation.org/ [1]: https://www.gnu.org/software/social/ https://www.gnu.org/software/social/
  - zyxley 10y ago
    Both of these are doomed in the mainstream until you can "just join" instead of having to pick from a list of servers you know nothing about anyway.
- kkanojia 10y ago
  Yes so many people click on ads. Brands also pay to get higher on users wall posts. To evaluate what brands do, try creating an advertising account and check for yourself how much they charge you and how good their targeting is.
- erdevs 10y ago
  To me it doesn't seem hard to believe that people will click on ads (mistakenly or purposefully), nor that bot traffic is so significant, nor that advertisers are willing to pay for brand presence even without clicks. What does continue to amaze me is that users tolerate how much data FB collects, how they use the data, how duplicitous they have been over time with users, and how they manipulate your feeds/user experience to benefit their revenue/advertising income. But I have come to realize most people just don't seem to care about privacy that much.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- shubhamjain 10y ago
  Even if you don't click on ads, it's not possible for you to cut them out of your sight. People see ads. They learn about the brand. If they are interested, they click on it to see more about it and if not, the brand getting registered in someone's mind is in itself a valuable asset. I believe that's the genius of Facebook, they have made the ad experience so seamless and intuitive. Note that, people generally don't buy things the first time they see a banner about it. The process of today's digital marketing involves nurturing at multiple levels. For eg, I learned about the brand from Facebook. Then, I stumbled upon a blog post written by them. "Wow. Who are these guys? Why do I keep hearing about them?". I learned more about them and maybe bought something from them after a while. Undoubtedly, Facebook uninterrupted ads will (have?) become a major part of this funnel.
  - igk 10y ago
    Not possible to cut them out of your sight... unless you use adblock
    - nl 10y ago
      Which is why lots of people are very bullish on FB. No adblockers on the FB app, and so the more AdBlockers take off the more it helps FB.
    - em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
      use uBlock Origin instead, since adblock has a problematic "acceptable ads" policy.
      - gruez 10y ago
        Or, you know... Uncheck a box
        em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
        But the problem is I want to recommend a plugin to my non-technical friends, who need something that protects privacy out-of-the-box without having to figure out how to open the plugin's settings and uncheck a particular box.
- Silhouette 10y ago
  Do so many people actually click on ads? On sites like Facebook? Yes. There's a lot of criticism, much of it justified, about spammy ads online. However, with a system like Facebook's or something like a search engine, the ads being shown are normally for something that might genuinely interest the viewer. That makes a favourable reaction much more likely, and it means far fewer resources are wasted showing ads to people who aren't likely to be interested.
- 20years 10y ago
  Yes people do click on Facebook ads and they convert extremely well when utilizing Facebooks targeting correctly. I have ran very targeted ads on FB that have achieved a 20% CTR and 10x ROI. This was for a product appealing to 8 to 12 year olds. I targeted Moms with kids in this age range in specific locations and who fell within a certain income. Other small business ads such as local coffee shops, restaurants, etc. that advertise deals/coupons also convert very well and get shared like crazy.
  - Throwaway23412 10y ago
    Facebook has nearly two billion users. The average user only needs to make FB $20 through a few ad purchases made on a whim and you've already doubled FB's yearly revenue. I've spent more money using restaurant coupons that came through the mail. It wouldn't even be that hard to target the average HN user: "20% off a GTX 1080!" Boom, done.
zappo2938 10y ago
When people purchase GQ or Vogue, they are buying it as much for advertisements as for editorial content. When someone flips through one of those magazines, it's like they appreciate the designers hiring models, taking pictures, and sharing it in the magazine even though both they and the reader paid. Take the ads out of GQ or Vogue and there is almost nothing there. If I create an ad on Facebook and people click on it, leave comments, and share it, Facebook will mark it as quality content and discounts the price per impression. It seems that Facebook wants to create the ad experience of GQ or Vogue and gives money incentive for advertisers to do it. Facebook knows I'm into technology and web development. There are lots of great products for web developers created every month. Facebook is a way for companies to find people who are interested in their products. It helps people learn about new products and it helps companies target people who are interested in their new products. There was a fundraising concert last year for a local charity. I volunteered $300 and time to do Facebook advertising. It yielded several thousands of dollars in ticket sales. For $300 Facebook let me communicate to people who really cared about either the bands who were playing or to people who really cared about the project what was happening. Facebook let me target people who like Candelbox within 40 miles of the venue. This is good. I don't understand why people hate on it so much.
- neotek 10y ago
  >I don't understand why people hate on it so much. Because they fundamentally misunderstand how advertising works. Read the comments on any article that discusses advertising and you'll see endless pages of people furious that Facebook or Google or Microsoft are "selling my data", as though an advertiser can click a few buttons and download a list of people's names and addresses and preferences. It's the same confusion that exists about cookies, which people seem to think are super secretive bits of code that can somehow infiltrate your browser and watch everything you do. The average person is completely misinformed about how advertising works, and the media breathlessly hypes up that misinformation despite the fact that they know very well exactly how advertising actually works and that nobody (well, nobody like Facebook or Google) is selling your personal information to anyone.
  - fdgdasfadsf 10y ago
clumsysmurf 10y ago
Yet another book out recently which explores this topic: "Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy" https://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Math-Destruction-Increases-Inequality/dp/0553418815 https://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Math-Destruction-Increases-In...
chirau 10y ago
Contrary to popular opinion, people want to see ads. A good ad is very much appreciated. This is why magazines still make money. This is why the SuperBowl is popular amongst non-football fans. Unfortunately, most ads are spammy which is why internet ads have earned this terrible reputation.
- burkaman 10y ago
  Super Bowl is sort of a good point, but what do you mean by magazines? Given a choice between a magazine with and without ads, are you saying some people would choose the one with ads? I don't think anybody seeks out ads, especially when they're paying for something. Super Bowl ads are only popular because they're essentially comedy skits and short films, they're basically free, and they're part of a cultural event that everyone you know watches. Almost nobody likes them because they appreciate quality marketing content or something.
  - nicky0 10y ago
    When I used to buy computer magazines a big reason was the ads from computer parts dealers inside. Nowadays a lot of that is on the internet, but ads are still a way to find out about products and prices.
  - morgante 10y ago
    > Almost nobody likes them because they appreciate quality marketing content or something. Quality marketing is fun to watch. Hence the people (including myself) who only watch the ads. It's hardly isolated to the Superbowl—look at the millions of views which some better ads get on YouTube. Likewise, I definitely think for many people advertising is part of the magazine experience. I certainly don't mind some of the nicer ads in The New Yorker.
    - paavokoya 10y ago
      Yeah, but quality marketing is almost always an isolated story/plot that has nothing to do with any products sold and they throw a logo and name on at the end. Most of these "quality" commercials could swap out products and the exposure would be the same. People don't want to be sold something, they just want to absorb interesting content. That's what modern advertisement gets wrong.
wtracy 10y ago
Any ideas how Facebook acquires information about things like home ownership? I don't recall filling that out as part of my profile. Do they perhaps match users' identities to public records? Is it possible to look up home ownership given just a name, demographic information, and contact information?
- teach 10y ago
  There must be because I get all kinds of junk mail since I bought a home. Some of the prescreened credit offers know the initial balance of my mortgage, too. And this is paper mail!
- e28eta 10y ago
  "Facebook offers marketers the option to target ads according to data compiled by firms like Experian, Acxiom and Epsilon, which have historically fueled mailing lists and other sorts of offline efforts. These firms build their profiles over a period of years, gathering data from government and public records, consumer contests, warranties and surveys, and private commercial sources — like loyalty card purchase histories or magazine subscription lists."
ddmma 10y ago
I guess there must be a fine line between data with personal character like social security number for instance and private information as your current location. Every coin had two faces, wonder how many faces bitcoin will have in the future
Silhouette 10y ago
Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this article is how much data from other sources Facebook apparently has access to now. How do these "data brokers" have such detailed information about things like purchasing power and spending habits to share with Facebook in the first place? It seems to me that a lot of that must come from either retailers or financial services, and in either case questions should be asked about how much people understand about what data is being collected for purposes other than simply making the intended purchase and what is done with that data.
frik 10y ago
You wouldn't see such an article on WashingtonPost before 2013. The former owner of the Post Donald Edward Graham was the mentor of Zuckerberg and Mr Graham is the lead independent director of Facebook's board of directors.
jonathankoren 10y ago
Like everyone, we get a quite a bit of junk mail at our house. Some of it comes to "current resident", others target us by name. Broadly speaking it breaks into two groups. Things that are either geotargeted. (In my neighborhood, that would include ads such as "Why don't you lease a car through Uber and pay for it by driving!") and those that are more personally targeted (think credit card offers). Today we got an interesting one. It was an offer to try Blue Apron. If we lived in Palo Alto, I'd chalk it up to geotargeting rich neighborhoods, but we don't live in one. Also, it came to wife who posts recipes on Facebook. It's enough to make us wonder if Blue Apron is somehow linking Facebook targeting data with real world names and addresses. Now I don't know if it's true, but if it is, that's creepy as fuck. That's autodoxing.
- kaybe 10y ago
  Germany has a law which allows you to adblock your mailbox. If you put a sticker on sayin 'no advertisements', you can sue any company that puts material without your name on it in.
  - sib 10y ago
    Curious: How would companies that mail things to you know that there is a sticker on your (physical) mailbox? Or do you mean that random companies are allowed to put things into your mailbox? In the US, only the US Postal Service is allowed to put things into your mailbox - not even FedEx or UPS are allowed to use it.
    - kaybe 10y ago
      There are companies using the postal service to send advertisements such as catalogs to all households in an area. If the mail does not have your name on it (no name, or something like 'to the residents of your address') they can't put it in. That holds for other random companies too. It's allowed in general to put paper in mailboxes I think, especially local businesses such as take-out food places do it occasionally.
nsxwolf 10y ago
I like when they show me ads for the expensive thing I already bought, as if I'm going to buy it again. Had they predicted I wanted to buy that thing, and shown me ads for things like it first, that might have been useful.
- ThrustVectoring 10y ago
  "People who have done things that suggest they're interested in buying this" is a highly valuable segment. Even if half of those people have bought the thing, it's worth advertising to them if it means you get the other half's eyeballs. They don't know that you bought it - they just know that you do things like those who want to buy. Like, I went to a coding bootcamp. Making that decision means browsing the web like someone who is interested in that bootcamp. I ended up seeing a ton of advertisements for the bootcamp I was currently enrolled in. If you do things that are similar to what a company's target market is, people will notice that and turn that into cash.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    Oh, but quite often they do know. Amazon knows perfectly well what I bought on their site. Vendor X should know perfectly well what I bought on their own site, using their own store instead of showing me the ad for that product for the next two months.
    - ThrustVectoring 10y ago
      Even if Amazon knows and organizes the fact that you've bought the thing, that isn't what the ad space is selling. They're selling space that targets a particular kind of person, and whether or not you've bought the thing doesn't matter. Like, the company buying the advertisement slot wants to target a particular sort of person, and this is measured in various ways. So the network selling the advertisement slot wants to group visitors into different buckets based on these measurements, and sell to whoever happens to pay the most for a bucket that view happens to land on. Basically, it's the end result of a process that confuses a measure with what it's measuring. You want to optimize for "interested in buying X". What you can actually look at is "things that people interested in buying X do more often than people who aren't interested". People buying advertising optimize for that, since it's actually possible to do so. And then since buyers actually care about the measurable proxies, that's what ad-space sellers give.
erikb 10y ago
"perfectly targeted ads"? Never had that experience. Even if I summarize all the analytics solutions out there, like ads, Facebook stream, Youtube, Amazon, Netflix. What they usually do is they figure out what I did in recent history or in general and present me more of that. I don't know about other people, but that's absolutely not what I want. That's boring, or maybe even unnecessary. Like, if I just bought a book about Linux system administration the only reason I would buy a second one would be because the first one sucked (and Amazon knows the ratings of the books). A reasonable suggestion after that would be something people do with Linux, like hosting a Wordpress blog. Honestly I might not even know what I would do with my newly acquired skill once I succeeded with that topic. Also it's quite tiresome to learn. Maybe after reading 30% of it I would like to insert a simple but interesting novel or comic book. Why not suggest something like that to me? Or I just watched an action movie on Netflix. Then I don't need other action movie suggestions. After that maybe I want to watch a character focussed tv show. What we need is not a "I know what you did and here is more of that" suggestion engine. What we need is a "oh that's getting boring, here is other awesome stuff that may surprise you" suggestion engine. Figure out the stuff I don't know I want and then suggest that. And honestly, not a single of these billion-dollar-engines out there do that for me at the moment.
- wlievens 10y ago
  So true, and it's often even worse in that you get peppered with ads of stuff you already bought.
  - seszett 10y ago
    The worst for me is getting back from holidays and having to suffer several additional months of ads for hotels in Japan everywhere on the web, reminding you that you're not there anymore. That's actually what made me install adblock on my new system even though I was resolved to try to withstand ads this time.
  - raverbashing 10y ago
    Amazon is the champion of that "Oh you just bough a mobile case, let me show you ten other types" or "You just bought this book, here's the paperback version of it"
et-al 10y ago
Well now they can definitely compete with eHarmony's 29 points of compatibility.
jypepin 10y ago
I definitely notice facebook ads being more and more interesting to me. And even more interesting is that most ads are of the "need creation" type. Things I didn't really google anything about, or I never really thought as a product I would buy that show up and are actually relevant to me. Last one I can remember is from yesterday a new startup doing good, cheap luggage (both carry on and bigger ones) which had me go to their website, spend some time looking at some of their stuff and made me think that I new a new carry on since then and I'm very close in puttin $250 in a carry on... I guess I travel pretty frequently I don't know if facebook is able to say that I travel a lot by different locations I check in, or from my use of google flights and booking.com etc. but yeah, I never googled anything about luggage or buying anything else related to travelling (except hotel and plane tickets). So pretty interesting to see
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
chinathrow 10y ago
"While you’re logged onto Facebook, for instance, the network can see virtually every other website you visit. Even when you’re logged off, Facebook knows much of your browsing: It’s alerted every time you load a page with a “Like” or “share” button, or an advertisement sourced from its Atlas network." If you want to enable sharing of your content on FB and other platforms easily but you do not want to support the tracking madness, you might want to use Shariff. It's setup to not send any tracking information to FB etc unless the user wants to share something. https://github.com/heiseonline/shariff https://github.com/heiseonline/shariff
astazangasta 10y ago
I don't understand how people can build such a system. Yes, you. I don't understand how people in the thread are debating the merits of advertisement, as if that is what matters here. 1984 is here, and we all love Big Brother. I mean this 100%: if you are participating in ad tech, collecting data on grandmothers in large databases, quit your job now. You are doing harm.
- umanwizard 10y ago
  You just repeated your conclusion over and over without giving any non-emotional evidence that it's actually harmful. I work for a company that makes a lot of money selling targeted ads. If I thought it was harming people, I wouldn't work there. But you haven't convinced me of that.
  - astazangasta 10y ago
    I'm not sure I intended to convince you, as opposed to merely expressing my emotional response, via this short Internet comment, and I'm not sure I can. I'm merely vocalizing my antipathy to a phenomenon I see around me every day, and that I feel is causing active harm, but that frequently passes without examination or moral outrage. I want you to know that I exist, that my position exists, first, since you should at least acknowledge that I am here in your own mind before you will consider my argument. But in brief: while you are making a lot of money selling targeted ads by enabling an apparatus that collates detailed information about the lives of everyone on the planet, where they live, how they live, who they speak to, other people are creating machines and systems of murder that increase the power to kill and persecute based on this kind of surveillance. The 20th century was replete with histories of people who used systems of surveillance to terrorize, persecute and kill hundreds of millions of people. The technology you are building is not only likely to be, but IS being used to this purpose today. I implore you to stop. What you're building is a system of power and control. It is immensely dangerous. I don't imagine I will convince you through this, or any comment I can make here, but maybe I can provoke a kernel of doubt.
JustUhThought 10y ago
So I guess we've moved past the part of the conversatio where we ask if this tracking is ok?
sp527 10y ago
Why did the submission title change? It was the article title before and I didn't find that remotely controversial. Did FB PR get in touch or something?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

240 points by suprgeek 10y ago

Does anyone know of any startups or upcoming projects that are trying to compete with Facebook (i.e building a social network?). I still haven't managed to wrap my head around how exactly facebook makes money. Do so many people actually click on ads? And this somehow makes billions? I find it very hard to imagine (for myself).

sfifs 10y ago
The objective of much of the advertizing money in the world is to get impressions and not clicks. Clicks are chased by companies who are primarily selling products and services on the web - and that is really a small part of the economy. Think of companies like beverage giants, car manufacturers, large consumer products giants, financial institutions etc or almost anyone who advertizes on superbowl on TV. Their primary objective is to build awareness & a certain brand perception among a large segment of consumers so that when you buy their category, you will choose their brand. Coca Cola doesn't necessarily want you to buy it that instant online you see the ad (though if you do, it's a nice bonus). Rather the objective is to build an equity that will make you think of yourself as a "Coke person" instead of say "Pepsi person". Remember that bulk of the advertizing money in the world comes from such players. They pay facebook a premium for being able to deterministically show your advertizing to a given target audience.
freax4evar 10y ago
There's diaspora [0] and GNU social [1], but those haven't yet managed to pop up into the mainstream. Network effects should ensure that they do not anytime soon. With that said, the mounting controversy over Facebook and Twitter's moderation may end up pushing marginalized groups into these platforms. [0]: https://diasporafoundation.org/ https://diasporafoundation.org/ [1]: https://www.gnu.org/software/social/ https://www.gnu.org/software/social/
- zyxley 10y ago
  Both of these are doomed in the mainstream until you can "just join" instead of having to pick from a list of servers you know nothing about anyway.
kkanojia 10y ago
Yes so many people click on ads. Brands also pay to get higher on users wall posts. To evaluate what brands do, try creating an advertising account and check for yourself how much they charge you and how good their targeting is.
erdevs 10y ago
To me it doesn't seem hard to believe that people will click on ads (mistakenly or purposefully), nor that bot traffic is so significant, nor that advertisers are willing to pay for brand presence even without clicks. What does continue to amaze me is that users tolerate how much data FB collects, how they use the data, how duplicitous they have been over time with users, and how they manipulate your feeds/user experience to benefit their revenue/advertising income. But I have come to realize most people just don't seem to care about privacy that much.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
shubhamjain 10y ago
Even if you don't click on ads, it's not possible for you to cut them out of your sight. People see ads. They learn about the brand. If they are interested, they click on it to see more about it and if not, the brand getting registered in someone's mind is in itself a valuable asset. I believe that's the genius of Facebook, they have made the ad experience so seamless and intuitive. Note that, people generally don't buy things the first time they see a banner about it. The process of today's digital marketing involves nurturing at multiple levels. For eg, I learned about the brand from Facebook. Then, I stumbled upon a blog post written by them. "Wow. Who are these guys? Why do I keep hearing about them?". I learned more about them and maybe bought something from them after a while. Undoubtedly, Facebook uninterrupted ads will (have?) become a major part of this funnel.
- igk 10y ago
  Not possible to cut them out of your sight... unless you use adblock
  - nl 10y ago
    Which is why lots of people are very bullish on FB. No adblockers on the FB app, and so the more AdBlockers take off the more it helps FB.
  - em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
    use uBlock Origin instead, since adblock has a problematic "acceptable ads" policy.
    - gruez 10y ago
      Or, you know... Uncheck a box
      - em3rgent0rdr 10y ago
        But the problem is I want to recommend a plugin to my non-technical friends, who need something that protects privacy out-of-the-box without having to figure out how to open the plugin's settings and uncheck a particular box.
Silhouette 10y ago
Do so many people actually click on ads? On sites like Facebook? Yes. There's a lot of criticism, much of it justified, about spammy ads online. However, with a system like Facebook's or something like a search engine, the ads being shown are normally for something that might genuinely interest the viewer. That makes a favourable reaction much more likely, and it means far fewer resources are wasted showing ads to people who aren't likely to be interested.
20years 10y ago
Yes people do click on Facebook ads and they convert extremely well when utilizing Facebooks targeting correctly. I have ran very targeted ads on FB that have achieved a 20% CTR and 10x ROI. This was for a product appealing to 8 to 12 year olds. I targeted Moms with kids in this age range in specific locations and who fell within a certain income. Other small business ads such as local coffee shops, restaurants, etc. that advertise deals/coupons also convert very well and get shared like crazy.
- Throwaway23412 10y ago
  Facebook has nearly two billion users. The average user only needs to make FB $20 through a few ad purchases made on a whim and you've already doubled FB's yearly revenue. I've spent more money using restaurant coupons that came through the mail. It wouldn't even be that hard to target the average HN user: "20% off a GTX 1080!" Boom, done.

zappo2938 10y ago

When people purchase GQ or Vogue, they are buying it as much for advertisements as for editorial content. When someone flips through one of those magazines, it's like they appreciate the designers hiring models, taking pictures, and sharing it in the magazine even though both they and the reader paid. Take the ads out of GQ or Vogue and there is almost nothing there. If I create an ad on Facebook and people click on it, leave comments, and share it, Facebook will mark it as quality content and discounts the price per impression. It seems that Facebook wants to create the ad experience of GQ or Vogue and gives money incentive for advertisers to do it. Facebook knows I'm into technology and web development. There are lots of great products for web developers created every month. Facebook is a way for companies to find people who are interested in their products. It helps people learn about new products and it helps companies target people who are interested in their new products. There was a fundraising concert last year for a local charity. I volunteered $300 and time to do Facebook advertising. It yielded several thousands of dollars in ticket sales. For $300 Facebook let me communicate to people who really cared about either the bands who were playing or to people who really cared about the project what was happening. Facebook let me target people who like Candelbox within 40 miles of the venue. This is good. I don't understand why people hate on it so much.

neotek 10y ago
>I don't understand why people hate on it so much. Because they fundamentally misunderstand how advertising works. Read the comments on any article that discusses advertising and you'll see endless pages of people furious that Facebook or Google or Microsoft are "selling my data", as though an advertiser can click a few buttons and download a list of people's names and addresses and preferences. It's the same confusion that exists about cookies, which people seem to think are super secretive bits of code that can somehow infiltrate your browser and watch everything you do. The average person is completely misinformed about how advertising works, and the media breathlessly hypes up that misinformation despite the fact that they know very well exactly how advertising actually works and that nobody (well, nobody like Facebook or Google) is selling your personal information to anyone.
- fdgdasfadsf 10y ago

clumsysmurf 10y ago

Yet another book out recently which explores this topic: "Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy" https://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Math-Destruction-Increases-Inequality/dp/0553418815 https://www.amazon.com/Weapons-Math-Destruction-Increases-In...

chirau 10y ago

Contrary to popular opinion, people want to see ads. A good ad is very much appreciated. This is why magazines still make money. This is why the SuperBowl is popular amongst non-football fans. Unfortunately, most ads are spammy which is why internet ads have earned this terrible reputation.

burkaman 10y ago
Super Bowl is sort of a good point, but what do you mean by magazines? Given a choice between a magazine with and without ads, are you saying some people would choose the one with ads? I don't think anybody seeks out ads, especially when they're paying for something. Super Bowl ads are only popular because they're essentially comedy skits and short films, they're basically free, and they're part of a cultural event that everyone you know watches. Almost nobody likes them because they appreciate quality marketing content or something.
- nicky0 10y ago
  When I used to buy computer magazines a big reason was the ads from computer parts dealers inside. Nowadays a lot of that is on the internet, but ads are still a way to find out about products and prices.
- morgante 10y ago
  > Almost nobody likes them because they appreciate quality marketing content or something. Quality marketing is fun to watch. Hence the people (including myself) who only watch the ads. It's hardly isolated to the Superbowl—look at the millions of views which some better ads get on YouTube. Likewise, I definitely think for many people advertising is part of the magazine experience. I certainly don't mind some of the nicer ads in The New Yorker.
  - paavokoya 10y ago
    Yeah, but quality marketing is almost always an isolated story/plot that has nothing to do with any products sold and they throw a logo and name on at the end. Most of these "quality" commercials could swap out products and the exposure would be the same. People don't want to be sold something, they just want to absorb interesting content. That's what modern advertisement gets wrong.

wtracy 10y ago

Any ideas how Facebook acquires information about things like home ownership? I don't recall filling that out as part of my profile. Do they perhaps match users' identities to public records? Is it possible to look up home ownership given just a name, demographic information, and contact information?

teach 10y ago
There must be because I get all kinds of junk mail since I bought a home. Some of the prescreened credit offers know the initial balance of my mortgage, too. And this is paper mail!
e28eta 10y ago
"Facebook offers marketers the option to target ads according to data compiled by firms like Experian, Acxiom and Epsilon, which have historically fueled mailing lists and other sorts of offline efforts. These firms build their profiles over a period of years, gathering data from government and public records, consumer contests, warranties and surveys, and private commercial sources — like loyalty card purchase histories or magazine subscription lists."

ddmma 10y ago

I guess there must be a fine line between data with personal character like social security number for instance and private information as your current location. Every coin had two faces, wonder how many faces bitcoin will have in the future

Silhouette 10y ago

Perhaps the most disturbing thing about this article is how much data from other sources Facebook apparently has access to now. How do these "data brokers" have such detailed information about things like purchasing power and spending habits to share with Facebook in the first place? It seems to me that a lot of that must come from either retailers or financial services, and in either case questions should be asked about how much people understand about what data is being collected for purposes other than simply making the intended purchase and what is done with that data.

frik 10y ago

You wouldn't see such an article on WashingtonPost before 2013. The former owner of the Post Donald Edward Graham was the mentor of Zuckerberg and Mr Graham is the lead independent director of Facebook's board of directors.

jonathankoren 10y ago

Like everyone, we get a quite a bit of junk mail at our house. Some of it comes to "current resident", others target us by name. Broadly speaking it breaks into two groups. Things that are either geotargeted. (In my neighborhood, that would include ads such as "Why don't you lease a car through Uber and pay for it by driving!") and those that are more personally targeted (think credit card offers). Today we got an interesting one. It was an offer to try Blue Apron. If we lived in Palo Alto, I'd chalk it up to geotargeting rich neighborhoods, but we don't live in one. Also, it came to wife who posts recipes on Facebook. It's enough to make us wonder if Blue Apron is somehow linking Facebook targeting data with real world names and addresses. Now I don't know if it's true, but if it is, that's creepy as fuck. That's autodoxing.

kaybe 10y ago
Germany has a law which allows you to adblock your mailbox. If you put a sticker on sayin 'no advertisements', you can sue any company that puts material without your name on it in.
- sib 10y ago
  Curious: How would companies that mail things to you know that there is a sticker on your (physical) mailbox? Or do you mean that random companies are allowed to put things into your mailbox? In the US, only the US Postal Service is allowed to put things into your mailbox - not even FedEx or UPS are allowed to use it.
  - kaybe 10y ago
    There are companies using the postal service to send advertisements such as catalogs to all households in an area. If the mail does not have your name on it (no name, or something like 'to the residents of your address') they can't put it in. That holds for other random companies too. It's allowed in general to put paper in mailboxes I think, especially local businesses such as take-out food places do it occasionally.

nsxwolf 10y ago

I like when they show me ads for the expensive thing I already bought, as if I'm going to buy it again. Had they predicted I wanted to buy that thing, and shown me ads for things like it first, that might have been useful.

ThrustVectoring 10y ago
"People who have done things that suggest they're interested in buying this" is a highly valuable segment. Even if half of those people have bought the thing, it's worth advertising to them if it means you get the other half's eyeballs. They don't know that you bought it - they just know that you do things like those who want to buy. Like, I went to a coding bootcamp. Making that decision means browsing the web like someone who is interested in that bootcamp. I ended up seeing a ton of advertisements for the bootcamp I was currently enrolled in. If you do things that are similar to what a company's target market is, people will notice that and turn that into cash.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  Oh, but quite often they do know. Amazon knows perfectly well what I bought on their site. Vendor X should know perfectly well what I bought on their own site, using their own store instead of showing me the ad for that product for the next two months.
  - ThrustVectoring 10y ago
    Even if Amazon knows and organizes the fact that you've bought the thing, that isn't what the ad space is selling. They're selling space that targets a particular kind of person, and whether or not you've bought the thing doesn't matter. Like, the company buying the advertisement slot wants to target a particular sort of person, and this is measured in various ways. So the network selling the advertisement slot wants to group visitors into different buckets based on these measurements, and sell to whoever happens to pay the most for a bucket that view happens to land on. Basically, it's the end result of a process that confuses a measure with what it's measuring. You want to optimize for "interested in buying X". What you can actually look at is "things that people interested in buying X do more often than people who aren't interested". People buying advertising optimize for that, since it's actually possible to do so. And then since buyers actually care about the measurable proxies, that's what ad-space sellers give.

erikb 10y ago

"perfectly targeted ads"? Never had that experience. Even if I summarize all the analytics solutions out there, like ads, Facebook stream, Youtube, Amazon, Netflix. What they usually do is they figure out what I did in recent history or in general and present me more of that. I don't know about other people, but that's absolutely not what I want. That's boring, or maybe even unnecessary. Like, if I just bought a book about Linux system administration the only reason I would buy a second one would be because the first one sucked (and Amazon knows the ratings of the books). A reasonable suggestion after that would be something people do with Linux, like hosting a Wordpress blog. Honestly I might not even know what I would do with my newly acquired skill once I succeeded with that topic. Also it's quite tiresome to learn. Maybe after reading 30% of it I would like to insert a simple but interesting novel or comic book. Why not suggest something like that to me? Or I just watched an action movie on Netflix. Then I don't need other action movie suggestions. After that maybe I want to watch a character focussed tv show. What we need is not a "I know what you did and here is more of that" suggestion engine. What we need is a "oh that's getting boring, here is other awesome stuff that may surprise you" suggestion engine. Figure out the stuff I don't know I want and then suggest that. And honestly, not a single of these billion-dollar-engines out there do that for me at the moment.

wlievens 10y ago
So true, and it's often even worse in that you get peppered with ads of stuff you already bought.
- seszett 10y ago
  The worst for me is getting back from holidays and having to suffer several additional months of ads for hotels in Japan everywhere on the web, reminding you that you're not there anymore. That's actually what made me install adblock on my new system even though I was resolved to try to withstand ads this time.
- raverbashing 10y ago
  Amazon is the champion of that "Oh you just bough a mobile case, let me show you ten other types" or "You just bought this book, here's the paperback version of it"

et-al 10y ago

Well now they can definitely compete with eHarmony's 29 points of compatibility.

jypepin 10y ago

I definitely notice facebook ads being more and more interesting to me. And even more interesting is that most ads are of the "need creation" type. Things I didn't really google anything about, or I never really thought as a product I would buy that show up and are actually relevant to me. Last one I can remember is from yesterday a new startup doing good, cheap luggage (both carry on and bigger ones) which had me go to their website, spend some time looking at some of their stuff and made me think that I new a new carry on since then and I'm very close in puttin $250 in a carry on... I guess I travel pretty frequently I don't know if facebook is able to say that I travel a lot by different locations I check in, or from my use of google flights and booking.com etc. but yeah, I never googled anything about luggage or buying anything else related to travelling (except hotel and plane tickets). So pretty interesting to see

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chinathrow 10y ago

"While you’re logged onto Facebook, for instance, the network can see virtually every other website you visit. Even when you’re logged off, Facebook knows much of your browsing: It’s alerted every time you load a page with a “Like” or “share” button, or an advertisement sourced from its Atlas network." If you want to enable sharing of your content on FB and other platforms easily but you do not want to support the tracking madness, you might want to use Shariff. It's setup to not send any tracking information to FB etc unless the user wants to share something. https://github.com/heiseonline/shariff https://github.com/heiseonline/shariff

astazangasta 10y ago

I don't understand how people can build such a system. Yes, you. I don't understand how people in the thread are debating the merits of advertisement, as if that is what matters here. 1984 is here, and we all love Big Brother. I mean this 100%: if you are participating in ad tech, collecting data on grandmothers in large databases, quit your job now. You are doing harm.

umanwizard 10y ago
You just repeated your conclusion over and over without giving any non-emotional evidence that it's actually harmful. I work for a company that makes a lot of money selling targeted ads. If I thought it was harming people, I wouldn't work there. But you haven't convinced me of that.
- astazangasta 10y ago
  I'm not sure I intended to convince you, as opposed to merely expressing my emotional response, via this short Internet comment, and I'm not sure I can. I'm merely vocalizing my antipathy to a phenomenon I see around me every day, and that I feel is causing active harm, but that frequently passes without examination or moral outrage. I want you to know that I exist, that my position exists, first, since you should at least acknowledge that I am here in your own mind before you will consider my argument. But in brief: while you are making a lot of money selling targeted ads by enabling an apparatus that collates detailed information about the lives of everyone on the planet, where they live, how they live, who they speak to, other people are creating machines and systems of murder that increase the power to kill and persecute based on this kind of surveillance. The 20th century was replete with histories of people who used systems of surveillance to terrorize, persecute and kill hundreds of millions of people. The technology you are building is not only likely to be, but IS being used to this purpose today. I implore you to stop. What you're building is a system of power and control. It is immensely dangerous. I don't imagine I will convince you through this, or any comment I can make here, but maybe I can provoke a kernel of doubt.

JustUhThought 10y ago

So I guess we've moved past the part of the conversatio where we ask if this tracking is ok?

sp527 10y ago

Why did the submission title change? It was the article title before and I didn't find that remotely controversial. Did FB PR get in touch or something?

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