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I guess there's two ways of looking at this: * 40% of targeted viewers didn't match "high-earner, college educated", the system is crap! or * 60% of targeted

I guess there's two ways of looking at this: * 40% of targeted viewers didn't match "high-earner, college educated", the system is crap! or * 60% of targeted viewers did match "high-earner, college educated", that's amazing! I dunno... do you have a better way of reaching those targeted viewers? Do you have a better way of measuring results than abstract page views? Depending on the context, 60% could be very worth it.

deleted 6y ago
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aeternum 6y ago
Yes, humans are also notoriously bad at Bayesian probability. This may actually be extremely impressive if high earners make up something like less than 1% of general page views. In that case, non-targeted advertising gives you a <1% chance of reaching your audience per impression. FB is much better.
indigochill 6y ago
>... do you have a better way of reaching those targeted viewers? I'd be curious to see how blogs do at targeting certain demographics. Presumably if you had a blog aimed at high-earning college educated people you could get a pretty high ratio of (target demographic/all viewers). But I assume advertisers generally trust metrics more than intuition so you need something like Facebook or Google's ad network to identify someone as belonging to a certain demographic before the advertiser will believe it.
- nopriorarrests 6y ago
  >Presumably if you had a blog aimed at high-earning college educated people you could get a pretty high ratio of (target demographic/all viewers). Correct. The problem of course is scale. How much money such blog can accept from advertisers before it will get absurdly expensive to buy ads from such blog? FB gives you targeting and scale, and you need both to run meaningful advertising campaign.
jariel 6y ago
If the campaign is well measured, this is taken into context. FB advertisers are paying for results and they will pay, or not, for those results, not really the targetting. If ABC corp knows for sure their target is top 50% Households, and FB can only roughly provide that, then the value will work itself out in the numbers. If FB can provide that target more precisely, those ads will convert better becoming even more valuable.
tsimionescu 6y ago
The emails claim the FB employee said 41% precision - so they only reached the targetted viewers 41% of the time, or 59% of the time an ad for high-earner, college educated reached someone who wasn't a high earner and/or college educated (I'm unclear whether it's supposed to be 'and' of 'or', but it's largely irrelevant).
- stickfigure 6y ago
  In the third paragraph of the article: But nearly 40 percent of the people who saw Investor Village’s ad either lacked a college degree, did not make $250,000 per year, or both, the company claims.

deleted 6y ago

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aeternum 6y ago

Yes, humans are also notoriously bad at Bayesian probability. This may actually be extremely impressive if high earners make up something like less than 1% of general page views. In that case, non-targeted advertising gives you a <1% chance of reaching your audience per impression. FB is much better.

indigochill 6y ago

>... do you have a better way of reaching those targeted viewers? I'd be curious to see how blogs do at targeting certain demographics. Presumably if you had a blog aimed at high-earning college educated people you could get a pretty high ratio of (target demographic/all viewers). But I assume advertisers generally trust metrics more than intuition so you need something like Facebook or Google's ad network to identify someone as belonging to a certain demographic before the advertiser will believe it.

nopriorarrests 6y ago
>Presumably if you had a blog aimed at high-earning college educated people you could get a pretty high ratio of (target demographic/all viewers). Correct. The problem of course is scale. How much money such blog can accept from advertisers before it will get absurdly expensive to buy ads from such blog? FB gives you targeting and scale, and you need both to run meaningful advertising campaign.

jariel 6y ago

If the campaign is well measured, this is taken into context. FB advertisers are paying for results and they will pay, or not, for those results, not really the targetting. If ABC corp knows for sure their target is top 50% Households, and FB can only roughly provide that, then the value will work itself out in the numbers. If FB can provide that target more precisely, those ads will convert better becoming even more valuable.

tsimionescu 6y ago

The emails claim the FB employee said 41% precision - so they only reached the targetted viewers 41% of the time, or 59% of the time an ad for high-earner, college educated reached someone who wasn't a high earner and/or college educated (I'm unclear whether it's supposed to be 'and' of 'or', but it's largely irrelevant).

stickfigure 6y ago
In the third paragraph of the article: But nearly 40 percent of the people who saw Investor Village’s ad either lacked a college degree, did not make $250,000 per year, or both, the company claims.