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DoorDash and others pay Facebook to acquire users and drive specific customer behaviors. This data sharing allows them to optimize and measure the results of th

DoorDash and others pay Facebook to acquire users and drive specific customer behaviors. This data sharing allows them to optimize and measure the results of their marketing campaigns. This data is used to create a feedback loop for ML models powering FB's ad auction and delivery. Marketing campaigns all have objectives that can be monitored via this data. FB will adapt auction dynamics to maximize the value for all parties, and this data helps FB properly set the auction bids or artificially inflate/deflate the price for individual users based on the predicted likelihood of a campaign objective being met. It's used for campaign measurement - DoorDash reports an action in their app, and FB says "that person saw or clicked on a FB ad before taking that action. give us credit for it!" Facebook is effectively grading their own homework here and ignores other marketing campaigns that may have contributed to the action, but there is a deeper science around interpreting this measurement (marketing mix modeling) and third-parties who can help validate. The data can also be used to create Facebook campaign audiences. "Show this promotion to customers who ordered from DoorDash 4 times last month." "Show this promotion to those customers' FB friends who do not have the app installed." "Show this promotion to users who have installed the app, but haven't placed an order yet." So no money is being exchanged for the data, but both parties are able to maximize their partnership value from it.

victorvation 6y ago
This is correct. Nothing overtly nefarious is happening here (above the baseline level of telling FB who your customers are in order to figure out how much ROI your campaign had). > Facebook is effectively grading their own homework here and ignores other marketing campaigns that may have contributed to the action One thing I'd add is that FB is _still_ incentivized to accurately attribute actions. Over-attribution (and thus over-estimation of ROI) would give FB more spend in the short term, but would hurt them in the long term by causing auction inefficiencies. This is the reason direct action campaigns on Google are perceived to be low(er) value: last click attribution disproportionately favors AdWords.
- tekknik 6y ago
  Just reading this and the parent post it is still amazing to me how much effort we expend to attempt to force a sale/advertise. We’re even calling it “pay to acquire users”, you don’t earn your users anymore, you buy them. Entire, very wealthy, industries exist around this one concept that users don’t want but businesses just love. Ranting yes, but interesting still.

victorvation 6y ago

This is correct. Nothing overtly nefarious is happening here (above the baseline level of telling FB who your customers are in order to figure out how much ROI your campaign had). > Facebook is effectively grading their own homework here and ignores other marketing campaigns that may have contributed to the action One thing I'd add is that FB is _still_ incentivized to accurately attribute actions. Over-attribution (and thus over-estimation of ROI) would give FB more spend in the short term, but would hurt them in the long term by causing auction inefficiencies. This is the reason direct action campaigns on Google are perceived to be low(er) value: last click attribution disproportionately favors AdWords.

tekknik 6y ago
Just reading this and the parent post it is still amazing to me how much effort we expend to attempt to force a sale/advertise. We’re even calling it “pay to acquire users”, you don’t earn your users anymore, you buy them. Entire, very wealthy, industries exist around this one concept that users don’t want but businesses just love. Ranting yes, but interesting still.