4 ms·

Worth noting that the $200 ultimately come from our pockets. We are paying those $200 anyway through markups on products ads made us buy.

lordnacho 6y ago
Isn't the 200 bucks more a way for FB sellers to get your money instead of other shops?
- names_are_hard 6y ago
  No, because it's $200 on top of what you would otherwise spend on the stuff you buy. The cost of marketing has to get baked into the price of goods or the sellers would be losing money. If they weren't advertising, or could advertise for less, they'd be able to lower prices.
  - tangjurine 6y ago
    Advertising can lower the cost per item, if there was a large startup cost and marginal costs are small. More importantly, facebook ads have caused me to buy more things because the ads showed me things that I thought were useful that I otherwise wouldn't have known about. Honestly, I feel like maybe I should be paying to see FBs ads sometimes.
rorykoehler 6y ago
I would love to see a correlation score between profiles and purchases
names_are_hard 6y ago
Not necessarily. I don't know what percentage of advertising revenue is from political advertising, but that's money that Facebook makes off of you that doesn't come out of your pocket. Essentially any time you're shown an ad that aims to convince you to support some idea, or vote for something, or change your behavior in some way (like going vegan) instead of trying to get you go spend money, you provide value to Facebook that doesn't come out of your pocket. I suspect that this is a lot of the value of "the next billion". Why bring Facebook to people who have little disposable income? Because there are still ad buyers who will pay to reach those audiences if they have votes to give, or even just public support for some cause or another.
- scatters 6y ago
  Money spent on political advertising absolutely comes out of your pocket. The process is: politicians levy taxes and excise, divert the revenue to linked entities, pay Facebook out of the proceeds. Or they extract money from companies under threat of expropriation via adverse regulation and litigation. In developing countries this is blatant; in developed countries it is disguised (as lobbying, consulting fees etc.). In fairness, there is an argument that at least some political advertising is consumption by politically engaged citizenry who don't stand to gain financially from the result; witness spending on unwinnable Senate races in the latest election, for example. But in general you have to assume that political advertising comes with some expectation of return, which comes out of the everyday citizen's pocket.
  - names_are_hard 6y ago
    Let me rephrase. Someone advertises to you because they expect something in return. Coca-Cola advertises to you because they expect you to buy coke. If you're too poor to buy coke, you're not useful to them. Joe's political campaign advertises to you because they want you to hate Bob, or be scared of those other guys, or whatever. This will help put Joe in charge, which is good for Joe and potentially bad for you, but it doesn't necessarily come out of your pocket. It comes out of the pockets of Joe and his friends. That might be taxpayer money, but you might not be the taxpayer paying for it. It might be private money from religious people who want gay marriage to be illegal. You pay for it with freedom, but not with money. My point wasn't that there's a free lunch here. My point was that there are other mechanisms at play, costs of advertising that don't translate directly into cost of goods and services you buy.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  I can't remember ever seeing an ad on Facebook trying to convince me to go vegan or do anything public-spirited. Ever. I have however seen plenty of ads trying to get me to spend money on something/someone. And conflating the political process with the marketing process is absolutely pernicious in a democracy. The Brexit campaign used micro-targeting of individuals with knowingly dishonest ads that played to their biasses. That's not persuasion - that's just manipulation. Put simply, no one should ever be allowed to run organised campaigns based on lying and distortion for any reason. If you need to lie you don't have anything valid to say in the first place so removing you from the public discourse causes no harm to anyone.
monkeybutton 6y ago
Potentially buy.
imtringued 6y ago
Product awareness is not the same thing as buying something.

lordnacho 6y ago

Isn't the 200 bucks more a way for FB sellers to get your money instead of other shops?

names_are_hard 6y ago
No, because it's $200 on top of what you would otherwise spend on the stuff you buy. The cost of marketing has to get baked into the price of goods or the sellers would be losing money. If they weren't advertising, or could advertise for less, they'd be able to lower prices.
- tangjurine 6y ago
  Advertising can lower the cost per item, if there was a large startup cost and marginal costs are small. More importantly, facebook ads have caused me to buy more things because the ads showed me things that I thought were useful that I otherwise wouldn't have known about. Honestly, I feel like maybe I should be paying to see FBs ads sometimes.

rorykoehler 6y ago

I would love to see a correlation score between profiles and purchases

names_are_hard 6y ago

Not necessarily. I don't know what percentage of advertising revenue is from political advertising, but that's money that Facebook makes off of you that doesn't come out of your pocket. Essentially any time you're shown an ad that aims to convince you to support some idea, or vote for something, or change your behavior in some way (like going vegan) instead of trying to get you go spend money, you provide value to Facebook that doesn't come out of your pocket. I suspect that this is a lot of the value of "the next billion". Why bring Facebook to people who have little disposable income? Because there are still ad buyers who will pay to reach those audiences if they have votes to give, or even just public support for some cause or another.

scatters 6y ago
Money spent on political advertising absolutely comes out of your pocket. The process is: politicians levy taxes and excise, divert the revenue to linked entities, pay Facebook out of the proceeds. Or they extract money from companies under threat of expropriation via adverse regulation and litigation. In developing countries this is blatant; in developed countries it is disguised (as lobbying, consulting fees etc.). In fairness, there is an argument that at least some political advertising is consumption by politically engaged citizenry who don't stand to gain financially from the result; witness spending on unwinnable Senate races in the latest election, for example. But in general you have to assume that political advertising comes with some expectation of return, which comes out of the everyday citizen's pocket.
- names_are_hard 6y ago
  Let me rephrase. Someone advertises to you because they expect something in return. Coca-Cola advertises to you because they expect you to buy coke. If you're too poor to buy coke, you're not useful to them. Joe's political campaign advertises to you because they want you to hate Bob, or be scared of those other guys, or whatever. This will help put Joe in charge, which is good for Joe and potentially bad for you, but it doesn't necessarily come out of your pocket. It comes out of the pockets of Joe and his friends. That might be taxpayer money, but you might not be the taxpayer paying for it. It might be private money from religious people who want gay marriage to be illegal. You pay for it with freedom, but not with money. My point wasn't that there's a free lunch here. My point was that there are other mechanisms at play, costs of advertising that don't translate directly into cost of goods and services you buy.
TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
I can't remember ever seeing an ad on Facebook trying to convince me to go vegan or do anything public-spirited. Ever. I have however seen plenty of ads trying to get me to spend money on something/someone. And conflating the political process with the marketing process is absolutely pernicious in a democracy. The Brexit campaign used micro-targeting of individuals with knowingly dishonest ads that played to their biasses. That's not persuasion - that's just manipulation. Put simply, no one should ever be allowed to run organised campaigns based on lying and distortion for any reason. If you need to lie you don't have anything valid to say in the first place so removing you from the public discourse causes no harm to anyone.

monkeybutton 6y ago

Potentially buy.

imtringued 6y ago

Product awareness is not the same thing as buying something.