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I swear there are bots running around on HN just waiting for the opportunity to tell us that we're not the customer. Bot or not, I'll ask: thanks for the insigh

I swear there are bots running around on HN just waiting for the opportunity to tell us that we're not the customer. Bot or not, I'll ask: thanks for the insight, how does that tie into parent's point? That advertisers "need" to show you ads for things already purchased? Advertisers are playing the long game, setting up for my next laptop purchase?

KineticLensman 6y ago
The advertisers can tell from cookies etc that you are interested in a product and were looking. They cannot always tell that you clicked 'buy' at some point.
briefcomment 6y ago
I think they're just saying that it doesn't matter if the end user converts based on the ad, but rather whether the company making the ad decides to put it on FB. FB wants to optimize for companies buying ad slots from them, not whether the end user is influenced.
- shawnz 6y ago
  If the company doesn't think FB users convert, why would they buy ads there?
  - msie 6y ago
    Some are just finding out now that FB ads aren't effective.
  - briefcomment 6y ago
    Attributing conversions to ads is a really difficult problem. There's probably a decent amount of cluelessness and institutional inertia that keeps them spending on ineffective ads. See the recent stories on Uber drastically reducing ad spend without seeing any downstream effects.
  - ndiscussion 6y ago
    A great mystery as old as the television https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-1/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-1/
  - konjin 6y ago
    FB adds told them to. The true end game.
  - pishpash 6y ago
    That's the dumb ML practice of those companies, not Facebook. Also even an irrelevant ad probably converts through brand exposure alone. They are forced to fork over to compete for limited exposure.
blackrock 6y ago
This bot can’t even write in proper English grammar. Bad bot.
drdaeman 6y ago
I'm sorry for somewhat cynical response, but... Those customers need to believe they're getting value out of it, and it's all that counts for Facebook's business. They target something like "people interested in computer hardware" and they get them, including those who don't need a laptop. It's bad but must be somewhat better than completely non-targeted ads, as it excludes people who have never expressed any interest (so, while having false positives at least it tries to save on false negatives). And, of course, there is opportunity for Facebook to tell how their superior ad platform is smarter than last year. The rest (but maybe even more important than actual value advertisers are getting) is advertising of advertising - all those stories how this machine learning agile blockchain big data is our only future. And many people just believe it, and non-ironically talk how Facebook is that omniscient deus ex machina that knows us better than we do ourselves. As this meme lives, those who have a product to advertise are inclined to believe it as well (and this makes them spend money on Facebook Ads). So, in the end, the fact you're getting ads you're not interested in is less relevant and is kind of shadowed over by the fact advertisers get somewhat better value or maybe even just believe they do. There are shouts that the king is naked and memes that modern machine learning has two objectives: classifying data and making predictions^W^W^W^W^W bullshitting investors and raising money... but so far, such voices are in minority.
- nsomaru 6y ago
  I don’t know, I live far away from the SV bubble and Facebook has worked well for our local, annual paid event (we advertised exclusively there so attribution was not difficult, in a simple way). 5000 people over 2 days. Is there another channel that will accept the money of a small business and provide the same results? Even with a compelling event we don’t have the relationships or budget to achieve the same effect through other channels.
  - tatersolid 6y ago
    You don’t need mountains of user data to geo-target

KineticLensman 6y ago

The advertisers can tell from cookies etc that you are interested in a product and were looking. They cannot always tell that you clicked 'buy' at some point.

briefcomment 6y ago

I think they're just saying that it doesn't matter if the end user converts based on the ad, but rather whether the company making the ad decides to put it on FB. FB wants to optimize for companies buying ad slots from them, not whether the end user is influenced.

shawnz 6y ago
If the company doesn't think FB users convert, why would they buy ads there?
- msie 6y ago
  Some are just finding out now that FB ads aren't effective.
- briefcomment 6y ago
  Attributing conversions to ads is a really difficult problem. There's probably a decent amount of cluelessness and institutional inertia that keeps them spending on ineffective ads. See the recent stories on Uber drastically reducing ad spend without seeing any downstream effects.
- ndiscussion 6y ago
  A great mystery as old as the television https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-1/ https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-1/
- konjin 6y ago
  FB adds told them to. The true end game.
- pishpash 6y ago
  That's the dumb ML practice of those companies, not Facebook. Also even an irrelevant ad probably converts through brand exposure alone. They are forced to fork over to compete for limited exposure.

blackrock 6y ago

This bot can’t even write in proper English grammar. Bad bot.

drdaeman 6y ago

I'm sorry for somewhat cynical response, but... Those customers need to believe they're getting value out of it, and it's all that counts for Facebook's business. They target something like "people interested in computer hardware" and they get them, including those who don't need a laptop. It's bad but must be somewhat better than completely non-targeted ads, as it excludes people who have never expressed any interest (so, while having false positives at least it tries to save on false negatives). And, of course, there is opportunity for Facebook to tell how their superior ad platform is smarter than last year. The rest (but maybe even more important than actual value advertisers are getting) is advertising of advertising - all those stories how this machine learning agile blockchain big data is our only future. And many people just believe it, and non-ironically talk how Facebook is that omniscient deus ex machina that knows us better than we do ourselves. As this meme lives, those who have a product to advertise are inclined to believe it as well (and this makes them spend money on Facebook Ads). So, in the end, the fact you're getting ads you're not interested in is less relevant and is kind of shadowed over by the fact advertisers get somewhat better value or maybe even just believe they do. There are shouts that the king is naked and memes that modern machine learning has two objectives: classifying data and making predictions^W^W^W^W^W bullshitting investors and raising money... but so far, such voices are in minority.

nsomaru 6y ago
I don’t know, I live far away from the SV bubble and Facebook has worked well for our local, annual paid event (we advertised exclusively there so attribution was not difficult, in a simple way). 5000 people over 2 days. Is there another channel that will accept the money of a small business and provide the same results? Even with a compelling event we don’t have the relationships or budget to achieve the same effect through other channels.
- tatersolid 6y ago
  You don’t need mountains of user data to geo-target