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I keep warning small time (ie most) FB page owners who advertise on FB to be very very careful as they are being subjected to a beefed up version of the psychol
by sputr 6y ago
I keep warning small time (ie most) FB page owners who advertise on FB to be very very careful as they are being subjected to a beefed up version of the psychological manipulation that regular users face as they, not the regular users, are the main customers.
Facebooks corporate incentive is to get you to FEEL like your getting good value out of advertising on Facebook and to get you addicted to doing it.
Not to actually deliver results.
So don't trust any metric they show you, because even if its not a total fabrication it's still presented in a way to deceive you to think its better than it is.
Always monitor your ROI and always calculate it using your truly end goal (sales, or in the case of civil society some sort engagement off Facebook that's tightly bound to you mission). Likes, shares, comments and reach should NEVER be the goal. Even if FBs interface is trying to convince you otherwise.
- soheil 6y ago> subjected to a beefed up version of the psychological manipulation Can you provide sources or evidence of this?
- jjj123 6y agoThere is no need for sources on this. This is how design works in modern tech. You build UIs in a way that improve your own metrics, which in this case is probably ad spend. They’ve likely run hundreds of A/B tests on the way ad data is displayed to try and optimize for that metric.
- dna_polymerase 6y agoFacebook is the company that admitted to fueling the Myanmar genocide. If anyone has to produce receipts it's them.
- soheil 6y agoAs it relates to the ad UI.
- dna_polymerase 6y agoRead into the books of Nir Eyal. Whatever systemic thing large SV companies do tries to replicate his design patterns. A company that has a value system as crooked as Facebook's can't be trusted.
- orhmeh09 6y agoWhat is Facebook’s value system? Is it different from other companies’ value systems?
- hackerfromthefu 6y agoHeres some insight into the mind that created facebook https://www.businessinsider.com.au/embarrassing-and-damaging-zuckerberg-ims-confirmed-by-zuckerberg-the-new-yorker-2010-9 https://www.businessinsider.com.au/embarrassing-and-damaging... quoted .. The technology site Silicon Alley Insider got hold of some of the messages and, this past spring, posted the transcript of a conversation between Zuckerberg and a friend, outlining how he was planning to deal with Harvard Connect: FRIEND: so have you decided what you are going to do about the websites? ZUCK: yea i’m going to fuck them ZUCK: probably in the year ZUCK: *ear In another exchange leaked to Silicon Alley Insider, Zuckerberg explained to a friend that his control of Facebook gave him access to any information he wanted on any Harvard student: ZUCK: yea so if you ever need info about anyone at harvard ZUCK: just ask ZUCK: i have over 4000 emails, pictures, addresses, sns FRIEND: what!? how’d you manage that one? ZUCK: people just submitted it ZUCK: i don’t know why ZUCK: they “trust me” ZUCK: dumb fucks
- sputr 6y agoIt's my pet name for "User experience". Because that's what UX is. My sources are: any book on UX or website design :). In it's good form it's learning how to design interfaces that are intuitive (i.e. they lead you to what you need). In it's bad form it's used to lead you to what the owners want (i.e. conversion to sales in it's purest form, or, in the case of Facebook, something much much worse). I've been debating publishing a blog calling on the EU to stop using the utterly incorrect term "social network" and start using something more appropriate like "advertising platform" or, even more appropriately something that includes a nod to their primary factor of success - induction of emotional liability and reactivity in humans.
- TechnoTimeStop 6y agoFacebook is probably lying about much more insidious things at this point
- spideymans 6y ago>Facebooks corporate incentive is to get you to FEEL like your getting good value out of advertising on Facebook and to get you addicted to doing it. Even more reason for us to be doubtful about FB's claims that small businesses would be decimated without FB's invasive tracking.
- cm2012 6y agoIf FB was actually completely forbidden from tracking, I'd estimate 85% of small shopify stores would die with it. The winners would be giant marketplaces like Amazon, who would be the only reliable sources left of customer acquisition.
- dannyr 6y agoSo how did small businesses survive before Facebook? I'm pretty sure small businesses existed back then. /s
- cm2012 6y agoReread my comment, I said Shopify stores. Local small businesses have other acquisition methods (walk through traffic, local search, etc.) and don't rely on FB.
- dillondoyle 6y agoHN loves to praise the digitization & automation of other industries. Why is this different? Retail is dying, malls are bankrupt. COVID amplified this change and small business struggles. Even big corps are losing retail to online sales, GME is a meme example lol.
- reaperducer 6y agoLocal small businesses have other acquisition methods (walk through traffic, local search, etc.) and don't rely on FB. Facebook disagrees. It's even taken out full-page newspaper ads to tell people that if small businesses don't advertise (and permit invasive tracking) on Facebook, they'll go out of business and take the economy with them.
- mrweasel 6y agoNot that it justify Facebook lying, but if Facebooks advertisers are repeat customers, then apparently the fake numbers doesn't matter. Customers apparently still feel that their advertising campaigns have paid of... Or do they simply don't measure the results independently? Facebook is repeatable shown to be lying, manipulating, failing to properly moderate their platform and having a general shady business practise, yet their stock price keeps climbing, they're not really punished in any meaningful way. It's disappointing that business are allowed to operate in this way, but I don't think anyone really care.
- reaperducer 6y agoOr do they simply don't measure the results independently? My observation has been that for many, it's both "don't" and "can't." Facebook makes it easy for people to advertise. Auditing your Facebook buy is a different skill set that requires different thinking, and more time than most small business owners have. So they just trust Facebook isn't lying to them, the way that they trust the metrics that the local radio station salesman gives them. Except that the radio station salesman will lose his job if the numbers aren't right. There is no punishment for Facebook lying to its advertisers.
- BbzzbB 6y agoIn a way, the more trouble FB gets without being scratched, the more the sustainability of its business model is proven. Regulatory changes are basically the main risk behind their stock IMO, or else they wouldn't be trading at a discount from their FAAAM peers. The more these attempts go no where, the more FB bulls have a reason to remain as such.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y agoAfter spending $~25 on ads and getting absolutely no conversion, I can assure you Facebook did a terrible job at making me feel like I got any value.
- wiether 6y agoYou forgot a "k" after 25 I guess ?
- faeyanpiraat 6y agoNo way! 25k gets you more than 50k clicks, which would require less than a 0.002% conversion rate to produce no results.
- faeyanpiraat 6y ago$25 is a very small amount, you need to experiment more, driving traffic is only one part of the puzzle, you haven't got enough data to confirm which part of your campaign is the bottleneck to conversions.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- seppin 6y agoI'm sure Facebook would say the same thing. "You need to give us more money before we give you any value, or signs of value."
- sputr 6y agoYou know the concept of "conversion". So, so, so many people don't. Idea of ROI is foreign to them. Facebook is going this whole "be your own advertiser" thing and ... well, it's working. They see the pretty graphs and big number ("You reached 50k people!") and they thing it's fantastic. The idea that the conversion from 50k impressions could be 0% ... does not compute, because they imagine 50k people spending cognitive energy on their ad ... not 50k people scrolling past the ad never even noticing it.
- throwawayfb69 6y agoI have previously got a decent ROI from Facebook ads, but it was also very evident that they were not providing the service that they claimed. Whenever I ran specific locally targeted ads, large numbers of apparently fake accounts from around the world would like my business page: representing a significant percentage of the clicks that Facebook was claiming. Clearly, FB was reaching some relevant users, since I picked some up as customers, but this was ridiculously padded with users outside the demographic that I was paying for, and I had to again figure out whether people were potential customers (re-qualify them). This left a sour taste and, as a result, I will not use Facebook advertising again. I'm not sure why it's in Facebook's interest to lie like this.
- jcpham2 6y agoPast experience echoes parent under multiple _local_ businesses. I feel like scammy and bogus likes might convert better for a non local internet only type of business, not so well locally
- disgruntledphd2 6y agoBuying likes is a pointless endeavour at the best of times, and these are not the best of times to be buying likes on Facebook (maybe 2008-11 it worked?).
- rightbyte 6y agoYou might buy likes to impress your boss' boss if you are a marketer. Ofent I feel marketing is some kind of scheme to keep money flowing to marketing departements.
- HenryBemis 6y ago> I'm not sure why it's in Facebook's interest to lie like this. Looks like you are doing your homework. Not everyone does though. Even if 60% of people who buy ads try to correlate the data, well there is a 40% that doesn't. That's easy money. What surprises me is the coincidence that you ad drew the attentio of fake accounts. So, who preserves a network of fake accounts that will give you the false validation that you ad is working? I see the benefit to FB that these fake accounts exist (and are NOT detected/eradicated).
- tremon 6y ago[company's] corporate incentive is to get you to FEEL like your getting good value out of [product] Isn't this the entire raison d'être of marketing, in general?
- sputr 6y agoWell, yes. But while the targets used to be people employed by companies dishing out company money ... now it's A LOT small time advertisers. Like civil society. You would be surprised how few people, who advertise on Facebook have heard of the concept of ROI. Most of these people are not advertisers ... but are spending a lot of money on it.
- ric2b 6y agoSure, and the same applies in those cases as well. But for most products it's rather easy to tell if you're getting the value you expect out of them, not so much here.
- jariel 6y agoAnyone who is spending any reasonable amount of money knows that. Remember that ad spend that's not conversion oriented is really fuzzy anyhow. Small timers are not spending huge dollars just to show people images of things.
- Alupis 6y agoTo make this worse - FB actively undermines your ability to validate their results! They remove OrderId's because they deem them "PII" (what!?) and just report number of conversions and conversion dollar amounts. This, coupled with the complexity of referral tracking, lookback windows, browsers clearing cookies, etc... it becomes nearly (or completely!) impossible to validate any results from FB's ad platform. Added to that, FB's ad platform's goal seems to be to spend your entire daily budget... every single day... regardless of ROAS. That's just absurd. Trust Us - they say...
- tomnipotent 6y ago> They remove OrderId's because they deem them "PII" This has always been a pet peeve of mine, and is clearly intentional by Facebook to prevent businesses from confirming and digging into results. No other major advertising partner does this. Not Google Ads or Bing, not even Outbrain or Criteo. If these services report a conversion, they return to me the ID I passed to them for the conversion (even if last-click doesn't match).
- mtnGoat 6y agoAttribution adds another messy metric. I’ve had many transactions claimed by multiple advertising platforms. Yikes. And ROAS is Google’s main measure of return, it’s a poor metric because it has nothing to do with profit.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- austinpena 6y agoThis is solved by primarily relying upon the conversions API. It’s not as accessible but there are a few good integrations that make it easier.
- seppin 6y agoIf Facebook was a small company, this would constitute fraud.