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That's not really how digital advertising targeting works though. In fact, they go to great lengths to make sure you illegally exclude by a class (Google is es

That's not really how digital advertising targeting works though. In fact, they go to great lengths to make sure you illegally exclude by a class (Google is especially strict about this) and don't transmit anything that is considered PII or "potentially PII". Gender, like IP address, is in the potentially PII realm. What this actually is going to do is target "people interested in typically male interests". That is going to end up including men, women and trans men. More importantly, the hit rate of gender-targeted ad spend trends towards 50% regardless of gender. It is not an effective tactic. This is totally overblown. /signed someone who used to be a digital advertiser in the legal space with a yearly budgeted spend north of $100 million.

SpaceManNabs 8y ago
100 million????? Is this normal? Did it actually work? I always wondered on the ROI of ads. It must be high if spending $100 million has no one but me replying...
- busterarm 8y ago
  Every industry is different. As far as legal advertising goes, in many states it's heavily regulated (especially Florida); traditional spend still outperforms digital as far as lead quantity. Depending on the campaign/type of spend, digital advertising tends to convert leads in a range somewhere between 0.02% and 10%. 10% is extraordinarily good. Lead quality largely depends on the type of case, but ROI on the good cases is anywhere from low 5/6-digit auto injury cases which require little effort from a lawyer to hundred-million and even billion dollar judgements/settlements.
PhasmaFelis 8y ago
> budgeted spend Does that just mean "budget"?
- dmoy 8y ago
  Specifically means the budget that will be spent on the ads, vs any kind of personnel, agency, etc cost. Budget alone would be more ambiguous. At least that's my recollection, though I've been out of ads for like a couple years now.
wutbrodo 8y ago
> What this actually is going to do is target "people interested in typically male interests". That is going to end up including men, women and trans men. Not to be too pedantic, but it would include some transwomen as well. Just seemed odd to go out of your way to include the other three categories on those two axes and leave this one out.
- daenz 8y ago
  >Just seemed odd to go out of your way to include the other three categories on those two axes and leave this one out. Nothing in their post suggests they "went out of their way" to exclude a particular demographic. To people who do not deal with trans issues on a daily basis, it can be easy to overlook all the nuances of being trans. Calling someone out in a way that accuses deliberate motivations is borderline toxic, no matter what social issue you're voicing.
  - wutbrodo 8y ago
    I wasn't calling anyone out, I don't deal with trans issues on anywhere close to a daily basis (or really ever, tbh) and I in no way mentioned or assumed the parent comment's motivation, let alone assuming it's negative. Mentioning the "going out of your way" wasn't a call-out, it was a way of justifying the existence of my comment: if he hadn't mentioned trans people at all, I wouldn't have at all bothered with my comment. Since he was explicitly considering trans people in his comment, the addition seemed appropriate, and it came more from the stereotypical engineer-y impulse of "technically this is incorrect in a non-trivial way, IMO". This is a bizarre position for me to be in: I get that the conversation around trans issues is extraordinarily toxic, and if anything I'm usually the one dismayed by its toxicity, but please don't impute motives to me that I in no way expressed. Frankly, the way you're looking at a simple statement and assuming all sorts of ulterior motives and implicit negative feelings is a precise mirror of the perhaps more commonly-known source of this toxicity, in which attempts at understanding from those less attuned to the issues (or as you put it, "dealing with it on a daily basis") are attacked as bigotry. I don't intend this to be insulting, but given that your comment implies a certain level of self-awareness about intellectual honesty and charity[1], I suggest that you take a look at the assumptions about me that _you_ are bringing to this conversation. The solution to reductive, toxic discourse isn't reductive toxicity in the other direction. [1] I haven't been active on HN for a while and have been on a board with much higher standards for intelligent, intellectually honest conversation, so I suppose I was uncalibrated and should've expected the knee-jerk down vote reaction I got, regardless of the political valence of my comment. Again, going off of your comment alone, I assume you're substantially above the median in this respect.
IanCal 8y ago
> That's not really how digital advertising targeting works though. In fact, they go to great lengths to make sure you illegally exclude by a class Facebook absolutely has an option to show your advert to a specific gender, though > Gender. Target ads to women, men or people of all genders. https://www.facebook.com/business/help/717368264947302?helpref=page_content https://www.facebook.com/business/help/717368264947302?helpr... So what's happening after that point to stop you from restricting in this way? I've never created an avert like this.
- busterarm 8y ago
  I'm trying to explain that gender targeting is imprecise. When I say the hit rate of ads targeting women is 50%, I mean that of the number of people who see ads that were targeted at women, only 50% of them were women. Targeting men works a little bit more consistently, by usually about 10%, but I don't know why. That's industry-wide. I don't know if Facebook does better or not, but I have no reason to think so. Even if they did, it probably doesn't matter that much.
  - SuoDuanDao 8y ago
    50% of viewers were women on ads targeted to women? How much better than chance is that when you take into account there are more men than women on facebook? It seems low given how well they can guess less tangible things like sexual orientation...
    - busterarm 8y ago
      Which is why ad targeting based on gender is perfectly fine.
      - pxtail 8y ago
        well, in this case it isn't perfectly fine because it shouldn't be described as "Gender. Target ads to women, men or people of all genders." if there is only 50/50 chance to display ad to woman. Isn't it just ridiculous and straight lie to potential advertisement buyer?
bobthepanda 8y ago
In the same vein, redlining wasn't targeting racial minorities per se, it was just targeting things that correlated with it highly. Under current civil rights legislation that is still highly illegal; gender-ish policy is still an explicit policy considering gendered things. > "A recipient’s express or admitted use of a classification based on race, color, or national origin establishes intent without regard to the decision-makers’ animus or ultimate objective. Such classifications demonstrate a discriminatory purpose as a matter of law. See Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900, 904–05 (1995); see also Wittmer v. Peters, 904 F. Supp. 845, 849–50 (C.D. Ill. 1995), aff’d, 87 F.3d 916 (7th Cir. 1996). “Put another way, direct evidence of intent is ‘supplied by the policy itself.’” Hassan v. City of New York, 804 F.3d. 277, 295 (3d Cir. 2015) (quoting Massarsky v. Gen. Motors Corp., 706 F.2d 111, 128 (3d Cir.1983) (Sloviter, J., dissenting)). Where a plaintiff demonstrates, or an agency determines, that a challenged policy overtly and expressly singles out a protected group for disparate treatment, “a plaintiff need not prove the malice or discriminatory animus of a defendant ….” Bangerter v. Orem City Corp., 46 F.3d 1491, 1501 (10th Cir. 1995); see also Ferrill v. Parker Grp., Inc., 168 F.3d 468, 473 n.7 (11th Cir. 1999) (“[I]ll will, enmity, or hostility are not prerequisites of intentional discrimination.”). Rather, the focus is on the “explicit terms of the discrimination,” Int’l Union, United Auto. Aerospace & Agric. Implement Workers of Am. v. Johnson Controls, Inc., 499 U.S. 187, 199 (1991); that is, how the recipient’s actions specifically deprived or otherwise adversely affected the individual or individuals of access to a federally funded program or benefit. Even benign motivations for racial classifications are presumptively invalid and trigger strict scrutiny in Equal Protection Clause and Title VI cases. Adarand, 515 U.S. at 223–24 (1995); Grutter, 539 U.S. at 326" [1] [1] - https://www.justice.gov/crt/fcs/T6Manual6#DD https://www.justice.gov/crt/fcs/T6Manual6#DD

SpaceManNabs 8y ago

100 million????? Is this normal? Did it actually work? I always wondered on the ROI of ads. It must be high if spending $100 million has no one but me replying...

busterarm 8y ago
Every industry is different. As far as legal advertising goes, in many states it's heavily regulated (especially Florida); traditional spend still outperforms digital as far as lead quantity. Depending on the campaign/type of spend, digital advertising tends to convert leads in a range somewhere between 0.02% and 10%. 10% is extraordinarily good. Lead quality largely depends on the type of case, but ROI on the good cases is anywhere from low 5/6-digit auto injury cases which require little effort from a lawyer to hundred-million and even billion dollar judgements/settlements.

PhasmaFelis 8y ago

> budgeted spend Does that just mean "budget"?

dmoy 8y ago
Specifically means the budget that will be spent on the ads, vs any kind of personnel, agency, etc cost. Budget alone would be more ambiguous. At least that's my recollection, though I've been out of ads for like a couple years now.

wutbrodo 8y ago

> What this actually is going to do is target "people interested in typically male interests". That is going to end up including men, women and trans men. Not to be too pedantic, but it would include some transwomen as well. Just seemed odd to go out of your way to include the other three categories on those two axes and leave this one out.

daenz 8y ago
>Just seemed odd to go out of your way to include the other three categories on those two axes and leave this one out. Nothing in their post suggests they "went out of their way" to exclude a particular demographic. To people who do not deal with trans issues on a daily basis, it can be easy to overlook all the nuances of being trans. Calling someone out in a way that accuses deliberate motivations is borderline toxic, no matter what social issue you're voicing.
- wutbrodo 8y ago
  I wasn't calling anyone out, I don't deal with trans issues on anywhere close to a daily basis (or really ever, tbh) and I in no way mentioned or assumed the parent comment's motivation, let alone assuming it's negative. Mentioning the "going out of your way" wasn't a call-out, it was a way of justifying the existence of my comment: if he hadn't mentioned trans people at all, I wouldn't have at all bothered with my comment. Since he was explicitly considering trans people in his comment, the addition seemed appropriate, and it came more from the stereotypical engineer-y impulse of "technically this is incorrect in a non-trivial way, IMO". This is a bizarre position for me to be in: I get that the conversation around trans issues is extraordinarily toxic, and if anything I'm usually the one dismayed by its toxicity, but please don't impute motives to me that I in no way expressed. Frankly, the way you're looking at a simple statement and assuming all sorts of ulterior motives and implicit negative feelings is a precise mirror of the perhaps more commonly-known source of this toxicity, in which attempts at understanding from those less attuned to the issues (or as you put it, "dealing with it on a daily basis") are attacked as bigotry. I don't intend this to be insulting, but given that your comment implies a certain level of self-awareness about intellectual honesty and charity[1], I suggest that you take a look at the assumptions about me that _you_ are bringing to this conversation. The solution to reductive, toxic discourse isn't reductive toxicity in the other direction. [1] I haven't been active on HN for a while and have been on a board with much higher standards for intelligent, intellectually honest conversation, so I suppose I was uncalibrated and should've expected the knee-jerk down vote reaction I got, regardless of the political valence of my comment. Again, going off of your comment alone, I assume you're substantially above the median in this respect.

IanCal 8y ago

> That's not really how digital advertising targeting works though. In fact, they go to great lengths to make sure you illegally exclude by a class Facebook absolutely has an option to show your advert to a specific gender, though > Gender. Target ads to women, men or people of all genders. https://www.facebook.com/business/help/717368264947302?helpref=page_content https://www.facebook.com/business/help/717368264947302?helpr... So what's happening after that point to stop you from restricting in this way? I've never created an avert like this.

busterarm 8y ago
I'm trying to explain that gender targeting is imprecise. When I say the hit rate of ads targeting women is 50%, I mean that of the number of people who see ads that were targeted at women, only 50% of them were women. Targeting men works a little bit more consistently, by usually about 10%, but I don't know why. That's industry-wide. I don't know if Facebook does better or not, but I have no reason to think so. Even if they did, it probably doesn't matter that much.
- SuoDuanDao 8y ago
  50% of viewers were women on ads targeted to women? How much better than chance is that when you take into account there are more men than women on facebook? It seems low given how well they can guess less tangible things like sexual orientation...
  - busterarm 8y ago
    Which is why ad targeting based on gender is perfectly fine.
    - pxtail 8y ago
      well, in this case it isn't perfectly fine because it shouldn't be described as "Gender. Target ads to women, men or people of all genders." if there is only 50/50 chance to display ad to woman. Isn't it just ridiculous and straight lie to potential advertisement buyer?

bobthepanda 8y ago

In the same vein, redlining wasn't targeting racial minorities per se, it was just targeting things that correlated with it highly. Under current civil rights legislation that is still highly illegal; gender-ish policy is still an explicit policy considering gendered things. > "A recipient’s express or admitted use of a classification based on race, color, or national origin establishes intent without regard to the decision-makers’ animus or ultimate objective. Such classifications demonstrate a discriminatory purpose as a matter of law. See Miller v. Johnson, 515 U.S. 900, 904–05 (1995); see also Wittmer v. Peters, 904 F. Supp. 845, 849–50 (C.D. Ill. 1995), aff’d, 87 F.3d 916 (7th Cir. 1996). “Put another way, direct evidence of intent is ‘supplied by the policy itself.’” Hassan v. City of New York, 804 F.3d. 277, 295 (3d Cir. 2015) (quoting Massarsky v. Gen. Motors Corp., 706 F.2d 111, 128 (3d Cir.1983) (Sloviter, J., dissenting)). Where a plaintiff demonstrates, or an agency determines, that a challenged policy overtly and expressly singles out a protected group for disparate treatment, “a plaintiff need not prove the malice or discriminatory animus of a defendant ….” Bangerter v. Orem City Corp., 46 F.3d 1491, 1501 (10th Cir. 1995); see also Ferrill v. Parker Grp., Inc., 168 F.3d 468, 473 n.7 (11th Cir. 1999) (“[I]ll will, enmity, or hostility are not prerequisites of intentional discrimination.”). Rather, the focus is on the “explicit terms of the discrimination,” Int’l Union, United Auto. Aerospace & Agric. Implement Workers of Am. v. Johnson Controls, Inc., 499 U.S. 187, 199 (1991); that is, how the recipient’s actions specifically deprived or otherwise adversely affected the individual or individuals of access to a federally funded program or benefit. Even benign motivations for racial classifications are presumptively invalid and trigger strict scrutiny in Equal Protection Clause and Title VI cases. Adarand, 515 U.S. at 223–24 (1995); Grutter, 539 U.S. at 326" [1] [1] - https://www.justice.gov/crt/fcs/T6Manual6#DD https://www.justice.gov/crt/fcs/T6Manual6#DD