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> [O]nline political campaigns targeted on users’ gender, geographic location, and political ideology had a significant effect in persuading undecided voters to

by bertil 8y ago

> [O]nline political campaigns targeted on users’ gender, geographic location, and political ideology had a significant effect in persuading undecided voters to support Mr Trump, and in persuading Republican supporters to turn out on polling day. No mention of any targeting beyond what has been on user’s profile for a decade, and it transparently used by most ads. > [W]e use variations in advertising prices across political audiences as a measure of the intensity of Facebook political campaigning. Political advertising represents less than 5% of ads on Facebook at the peak of a campaign, in swing states: I’m puzzled you can measure anything. Actually: > As illustrated in Figure 4, average worldwide prices sharply rose during the last two months before the elections (an average increase of around 50 USD cents, which corresponds to about a 25 percent increase in prices), and steadily dropped over the three months after the election date. That’s unlikely to be the election unless people spend money for three months after. That’s more likely to be US Holiday Season.

matt4077 8y ago
> No mention of any targeting beyond what has been on user’s profile for a decade, The story about Cambridge Anal. was specifically that they had build a dataset that could infer a lot of information, such as sexual orientation and political affiliation from a small set of apparently harmless information. > Political advertising represents less than 5% A market's reaction to such variation can be widely different. For bread, it's probably nothing. If it's the last batch of the only medication that is effective against some just-discovered deadly pandemic, the price could rise from %1 to a billion. > That’s unlikely to be the election unless people spend money for three months after. That’s more likely to be US Holiday Season. The chart & data here are average over 40 different worldwide elections. Unless elections cluster around certain dates, the data should be pretty well spread out over the year.
- bertil 8y ago
  > The story about Cambridge Anal. was specifically that they had build a dataset that could infer a lot of information, such as sexual orientation and political affiliation from a small set of apparently harmless information. Yeah. That story is false. They used magazine subscriptions and car model. Source: talked to the employees. > The chart & data here are average over 40 different worldwide elections. Unless elections cluster around certain dates, the data should be pretty well spread out over the year. I’m fairly confident no political advertising is significant after the election in most of them. The big secret here is that US ads still represent the largest share of Facebook’s market and that commercial markets have a strong yearly pattern. I don’t know how they averaged to get a ratio number, but I would compare years with and without elections. And, yes, elections tend to be around the same date in most countries (except, notoriously, the UK): it doesn’t have to be the same in each country for an aggregated commercial pattern to be prevalent.
dillondoyle 8y ago
100% agree. Even if they could measure political spend, there is no way to tie that to persuasion. Maybe those who use FB are more likely to support trump. WAY too may variables without a control group 1:1 voter experiment (i've done survey before, match 1:1, withhold 20% random, run ads to 80%, run follow up survey, compare difference between two groups)

by bertil 8y ago

matt4077 8y ago

> No mention of any targeting beyond what has been on user’s profile for a decade, The story about Cambridge Anal. was specifically that they had build a dataset that could infer a lot of information, such as sexual orientation and political affiliation from a small set of apparently harmless information. > Political advertising represents less than 5% A market's reaction to such variation can be widely different. For bread, it's probably nothing. If it's the last batch of the only medication that is effective against some just-discovered deadly pandemic, the price could rise from %1 to a billion. > That’s unlikely to be the election unless people spend money for three months after. That’s more likely to be US Holiday Season. The chart & data here are average over 40 different worldwide elections. Unless elections cluster around certain dates, the data should be pretty well spread out over the year.

bertil 8y ago
> The story about Cambridge Anal. was specifically that they had build a dataset that could infer a lot of information, such as sexual orientation and political affiliation from a small set of apparently harmless information. Yeah. That story is false. They used magazine subscriptions and car model. Source: talked to the employees. > The chart & data here are average over 40 different worldwide elections. Unless elections cluster around certain dates, the data should be pretty well spread out over the year. I’m fairly confident no political advertising is significant after the election in most of them. The big secret here is that US ads still represent the largest share of Facebook’s market and that commercial markets have a strong yearly pattern. I don’t know how they averaged to get a ratio number, but I would compare years with and without elections. And, yes, elections tend to be around the same date in most countries (except, notoriously, the UK): it doesn’t have to be the same in each country for an aggregated commercial pattern to be prevalent.

dillondoyle 8y ago

100% agree. Even if they could measure political spend, there is no way to tie that to persuasion. Maybe those who use FB are more likely to support trump. WAY too may variables without a control group 1:1 voter experiment (i've done survey before, match 1:1, withhold 20% random, run ads to 80%, run follow up survey, compare difference between two groups)