5 ms·

This is going to give away a huge competitive advantage for good marketers. If I know my political ads are most effective with Women, 45-65, who are Hispanic,

This is going to give away a huge competitive advantage for good marketers. If I know my political ads are most effective with Women, 45-65, who are Hispanic, and that's where I'm focusing my spend.... Is it fair for the opponent to have that information? If they give that level of detail for political ads, I hope they at least spare startup businesses who are still researching to find their ideal audience.

cm2012 8y ago
FB is also doing the same thing, starting today. Brutal.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Is it fair for the opponent to have that information? I'm parsing "fair" in the form of: imagine two societies, one where such information is private the other where it's public. Who outperforms? Would the number of start-ups which cave because an incumbent snipes their marketing outweigh the number who could piggyback on an incumbent's revealed slicing? (The latter, by marketing to the same customers better or noticing who is being left out.) Will consumers see more advertising or less? If more, will they respond to the deluge by defaulting to the incumbent or trying new options more frequently? I don't know. But we have an opportunity to find out. If this drives innovation, I'd say a case is to be made to open up these data across advertising platforms. Who knows. Maybe it's the tool to pry apart Facebook and Google's stranglehold.
- rock_hard 8y ago
  You realize though that at least a Facebook has the same features, right? In fact FB went much farther in that for example they let you go back 7 YEARS in a pages ad history and not just 7 days like Twitter does
  - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
    > FB went much farther in that for example they let you go back 7 YEARS in a pages ad history I am not completely familiar with Facebook's ad platform. Does it really let anyone see, for example, which demographics Procter & Gamble is targeting with a particular Gilette ad? (Or its Gilette brand, generally?)
    - rock_hard 8y ago
      Yep it does. They tell you exactly why you are seeing a ad. For political ads you can also go to a page and look up all the ad campaigns they are running, how much money was spend, who was target, what the ad creative was, etc
      - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        > They tell you exactly why you are seeing a ad Pardon me, I meant that anyone should be able to see who anyone else is targeting. Currently, when Terrible Kale Bar® shows me an ad, I can see it's because I liked a post of my Portland friend's. But I can't look at Terrible Kale Bar®'s page and see a list of whom they're targeting.
- mygo 8y ago
  > by marketing to the same customers better or noticing who is being left out. Noticing who is being left out would be a start-up’s marketing strategy that can be sniped by the incumbent. I agree with the overall sentiments however.
hbosch 8y ago
In my opinion, not only is it fair but it’s important that all ads — particularly political ads — are transparent in this way. This transparency is a public good for media literacy. Marketing is manipulation and often people don’t notice or are tricked into thinking elsewise.
jdavis703 8y ago
Yes it's fair. In the 2016 presidential election campaigns were using micro-targeted voter suppression campaigns that attempted to get certain demographics to stay home. From a story in The Atlatnic: "The animation will be delivered to certain African American voters through Facebook 'dark posts'—nonpublic posts whose viewership the campaign controls so that, as [campaign digital guru Brad] Parscale puts it, 'only the people we want to see it, see it.'" If the opposing campaigns had this information they could potentially re-deploy resources. Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/trumps-black-voter-dilemma/505586/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/trumps-...
CodeCube 8y ago
Yeah, as a consumer, this sentiment isn't gonna get any sympathy from me ... I already despise being "marketed to", which has made me really jaded about content marketing; particularly when I consume it but only realize it's just shilling some product or service after the fact. All advertising should be (by law, or at least industry standard) clearly marked and disclosed.
colordrops 8y ago
Perhaps this will make more money for Twitter due to advertisers who buy ads for irrelevant segments to obfuscate their strategy.
jeffreylees 8y ago
If your marketing strategy requires depends entirely upon your market not knowing they're being marketed to, or your competitors not knowing who you're marketing to, there's something wrong with the strategy. It's similar logic in the security industry to the idea of security by obscurity alone.
wpietri 8y ago
Is it fair to the people being targeted for manipulation to not know why they're being targeted?

cm2012 8y ago

FB is also doing the same thing, starting today. Brutal.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> Is it fair for the opponent to have that information? I'm parsing "fair" in the form of: imagine two societies, one where such information is private the other where it's public. Who outperforms? Would the number of start-ups which cave because an incumbent snipes their marketing outweigh the number who could piggyback on an incumbent's revealed slicing? (The latter, by marketing to the same customers better or noticing who is being left out.) Will consumers see more advertising or less? If more, will they respond to the deluge by defaulting to the incumbent or trying new options more frequently? I don't know. But we have an opportunity to find out. If this drives innovation, I'd say a case is to be made to open up these data across advertising platforms. Who knows. Maybe it's the tool to pry apart Facebook and Google's stranglehold.

rock_hard 8y ago
You realize though that at least a Facebook has the same features, right? In fact FB went much farther in that for example they let you go back 7 YEARS in a pages ad history and not just 7 days like Twitter does
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > FB went much farther in that for example they let you go back 7 YEARS in a pages ad history I am not completely familiar with Facebook's ad platform. Does it really let anyone see, for example, which demographics Procter & Gamble is targeting with a particular Gilette ad? (Or its Gilette brand, generally?)
  - rock_hard 8y ago
    Yep it does. They tell you exactly why you are seeing a ad. For political ads you can also go to a page and look up all the ad campaigns they are running, how much money was spend, who was target, what the ad creative was, etc
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > They tell you exactly why you are seeing a ad Pardon me, I meant that anyone should be able to see who anyone else is targeting. Currently, when Terrible Kale Bar® shows me an ad, I can see it's because I liked a post of my Portland friend's. But I can't look at Terrible Kale Bar®'s page and see a list of whom they're targeting.
mygo 8y ago
> by marketing to the same customers better or noticing who is being left out. Noticing who is being left out would be a start-up’s marketing strategy that can be sniped by the incumbent. I agree with the overall sentiments however.

hbosch 8y ago

In my opinion, not only is it fair but it’s important that all ads — particularly political ads — are transparent in this way. This transparency is a public good for media literacy. Marketing is manipulation and often people don’t notice or are tricked into thinking elsewise.

jdavis703 8y ago

Yes it's fair. In the 2016 presidential election campaigns were using micro-targeted voter suppression campaigns that attempted to get certain demographics to stay home. From a story in The Atlatnic: "The animation will be delivered to certain African American voters through Facebook 'dark posts'—nonpublic posts whose viewership the campaign controls so that, as [campaign digital guru Brad] Parscale puts it, 'only the people we want to see it, see it.'" If the opposing campaigns had this information they could potentially re-deploy resources. Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/trumps-black-voter-dilemma/505586/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/trumps-...

CodeCube 8y ago

Yeah, as a consumer, this sentiment isn't gonna get any sympathy from me ... I already despise being "marketed to", which has made me really jaded about content marketing; particularly when I consume it but only realize it's just shilling some product or service after the fact. All advertising should be (by law, or at least industry standard) clearly marked and disclosed.

colordrops 8y ago

Perhaps this will make more money for Twitter due to advertisers who buy ads for irrelevant segments to obfuscate their strategy.

jeffreylees 8y ago

If your marketing strategy requires depends entirely upon your market not knowing they're being marketed to, or your competitors not knowing who you're marketing to, there's something wrong with the strategy. It's similar logic in the security industry to the idea of security by obscurity alone.

wpietri 8y ago

Is it fair to the people being targeted for manipulation to not know why they're being targeted?