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Facebook is one of the only means to do reasonably targeted advertising with a broad reach. Google is keyword only, and that's limited. Banner network display

by jariel 6y ago

Facebook is one of the only means to do reasonably targeted advertising with a broad reach. Google is keyword only, and that's limited. Banner network display ads are useless. The privacy debate is woefully lopsided by people who have never spent a dime marketing. I suggest all the startupy people on HN spend some time trying to get the word out and then they'll realize what the 'hard part' of the business is because it's not code. Efficient advertising, which is to say getting in front of people who have a legit curiosity for your product with ads that are not distracting, is possible and ideal for everyone, but can only be done with at least some data. The economy would grow literally by 1% more if we could get people connected with the things they need, when they need them and we'd all be better off.

Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago
This is an advertisement for advertising...
forgingahead 6y ago
Suprised at the downvotes on your comment, but you're right, Facebook provides an advertising targeting engine that doesn't have a parallel. Whether that's good or bad for is separate from whether it's a useful business tool. @jariel can you share any resource for people looking to understand and dip their feet running their own FB ads?
- jariel 6y ago
  I would but there's actually quite an enormos amount of information out there already. Also, the pitfalls of FB ads are generally well known as well, we all know their numbers are a little ragged and we all know that 'likes' don't have much value in most scenarios. Frankly, I would encourage anyone to stick $20 into FB ad platform and just run a few ads to drive some traffic to their own pages. It's a powerful and revelatory experience, advertising is a 'dark art' to too many people but it shouldn't be. The moment you are in a position of having to market and sell a product, especially coming from another discipline, your world turns upside down and you see everything differently.
  - forgingahead 6y ago
    I've tinkered with it, and had poor experiences hiring people to run FB ads, so any specific resources you can recommend would be appreciated. Kind of like how I would recommend Michael Hartl's Rails tutorial for someone looking to explore Rails in a productive way. There is certainly a lot of information out there but much is generic, others are paid, and many are scams.
    - leesalminen 6y ago
      When it was time for us to start PPC ads for my B2B SaaS product, I took a whack at doing my own FB and AdWords campaigns. I found FB to be much more intuitive than Goog. I uploaded some collateral I threw together and targeted it towards people who were in specific Groups, people who liked specific things and excluded people who already liked our page. I clicked submit and after a day we started seeing an uptick in leads. Real, actionable leads. Meeting people at industry trade shows told me that they saw our FB ad. It worked (and still works) well for us in that small niche of the world with a well defined target demographic. I never felt compelled to hire anyone to manage it. I don’t have any books to recommend for you, but why not do some trial and error with small budgets to see what works for you?
    - mtnGoat 6y ago
      No specific resources, but I’ll give you a tip that has turned around a lot of campaigns and helped a number of clients figure it a profitable FB advertising strategy. Offer something free, like an ebook, webinar, etc. and gather email addresses to access it. This gives you a chance to follow up and grow your email lists. So even if they don’t buy, you at least get a lead. When you just buy a click, you always gotta hit a Homer. Figure out it a way to make base hits count.
bart_spoon 6y ago
This entire thesis hinges on targeted advertising being effective. There is a growing group of people who are increasingly doubtful of this [0]. I personally have worked as a data scientist trying to assess the value generated by various advertising campaigns, and I personally found that the field is rife with egregious statistical misuse, usually because it was necessary to prove significant ROI on advertising. [0] https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-called-online-advertising/13228924500-22d5fd24 https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-h...
- bluGill 6y ago
  Which targeted is ineffective. Keywords can be useless while the whole field can be useful. Which is to say noting that I'm searching for C++ and so advertising your compiler or programing class is useless - I'm already a programmer (I just forgot the exact spelling or order of arguments to the thing I need) and my company has chosen my compiler. However if you know I my hobby you can target me with your new drill bit and be better yet. Though the largest advertisers don't care. Coke doesn't care that I don't like soda, they still want to target me just in case I'm called to bring drinks to some event. Ford can safely assume all Americans own a car and be close enough to right. Likewise everyone uses toilet paper (bidet users can be ignored) and soap (if you don't use soap you should be the highest target, though the ads perhaps should be different from those who use soap)
  - godelski 6y ago
    Coke doesn't advertise to get you to buy the product. In many situations you don't actually have a choice (restaurant, theatre, etc). They advertise to make you feel a certain way about the brand. Car companies do something similar. They aren't advertising to get you to buy the car but associate a certain prestige with the vehicle which in turn makes their actual target buy their car. I'm not sure why everyone thinks ads are strictly about buying things. There's political ads, religious ads, pubic service announcements, etc. Ads are versatile.
    - bluGill 6y ago
Closi 6y ago
> The privacy debate is woefully lopsided by people who have never spent a dime marketing. Why should marketers influence how much privacy I have? Their incentive is for me to have as little privacy as possible. This is like saying anti-war campaigns are woefully lopsided by people who have never sold munitions.
minieggs 6y ago
A measly 1% for the loss of our online privacy?
- jariel 6y ago
  The economy is growing 2-3% these days, so another point on that is about a 30% increase in growth and would be a spectacular for humanity. Your privacy is not compromised by Facebook. Nobody is harmed. There are zero cases of people being hurt or their lives being denigrated due to targeted advertising. FB is not perfect, I think there are better ways, I don't like them, but it's hyperbolic to suggest there is material systematic harm. Nobody is really losing that much.
  - geoduck14 6y ago
    > Your privacy is not compromised by Facebook Do you and I live in different universes? The one I live in blamed FB for allowing 3rd partner apps to download loads of personal information, and then use it to send targeted adds to influence an election. Also, adds spreading misinformation about Covid 19. At the early part of FB, kids could upload pictures with their EXIF data that included GPS coordinates- which were then used for kidnapping or serial molestation. With location tracking for adds, no one even needs a legitimate reason to buy location data. Thus can be used for thugs to track down and kill people they don't like.
    - jariel 6y ago
      You are crossing streams. Nobody is harmed by virtue of invasion of their privacy. Ads, which relate to misinformation about COVID and elections are completely separate issue, and basically have nothing to do with the detailed nature of targeting. 'Harmful Ads' can be on any platform in the world - Google, Television, Magazines, Billboards. There is no harm to you due to the fact that FB has a 90% chance of knowing your gender, age, and a couple of your interests. None.

by jariel 6y ago

Red_Leaves_Flyy 6y ago

This is an advertisement for advertising...

forgingahead 6y ago

Suprised at the downvotes on your comment, but you're right, Facebook provides an advertising targeting engine that doesn't have a parallel. Whether that's good or bad for is separate from whether it's a useful business tool. @jariel can you share any resource for people looking to understand and dip their feet running their own FB ads?

jariel 6y ago
I would but there's actually quite an enormos amount of information out there already. Also, the pitfalls of FB ads are generally well known as well, we all know their numbers are a little ragged and we all know that 'likes' don't have much value in most scenarios. Frankly, I would encourage anyone to stick $20 into FB ad platform and just run a few ads to drive some traffic to their own pages. It's a powerful and revelatory experience, advertising is a 'dark art' to too many people but it shouldn't be. The moment you are in a position of having to market and sell a product, especially coming from another discipline, your world turns upside down and you see everything differently.
- forgingahead 6y ago
  I've tinkered with it, and had poor experiences hiring people to run FB ads, so any specific resources you can recommend would be appreciated. Kind of like how I would recommend Michael Hartl's Rails tutorial for someone looking to explore Rails in a productive way. There is certainly a lot of information out there but much is generic, others are paid, and many are scams.
  - leesalminen 6y ago
    When it was time for us to start PPC ads for my B2B SaaS product, I took a whack at doing my own FB and AdWords campaigns. I found FB to be much more intuitive than Goog. I uploaded some collateral I threw together and targeted it towards people who were in specific Groups, people who liked specific things and excluded people who already liked our page. I clicked submit and after a day we started seeing an uptick in leads. Real, actionable leads. Meeting people at industry trade shows told me that they saw our FB ad. It worked (and still works) well for us in that small niche of the world with a well defined target demographic. I never felt compelled to hire anyone to manage it. I don’t have any books to recommend for you, but why not do some trial and error with small budgets to see what works for you?
  - mtnGoat 6y ago
    No specific resources, but I’ll give you a tip that has turned around a lot of campaigns and helped a number of clients figure it a profitable FB advertising strategy. Offer something free, like an ebook, webinar, etc. and gather email addresses to access it. This gives you a chance to follow up and grow your email lists. So even if they don’t buy, you at least get a lead. When you just buy a click, you always gotta hit a Homer. Figure out it a way to make base hits count.

bart_spoon 6y ago

This entire thesis hinges on targeted advertising being effective. There is a growing group of people who are increasingly doubtful of this [0]. I personally have worked as a data scientist trying to assess the value generated by various advertising campaigns, and I personally found that the field is rife with egregious statistical misuse, usually because it was necessary to prove significant ROI on advertising. [0] https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-here-its-called-online-advertising/13228924500-22d5fd24 https://thecorrespondent.com/100/the-new-dot-com-bubble-is-h...

bluGill 6y ago
Which targeted is ineffective. Keywords can be useless while the whole field can be useful. Which is to say noting that I'm searching for C++ and so advertising your compiler or programing class is useless - I'm already a programmer (I just forgot the exact spelling or order of arguments to the thing I need) and my company has chosen my compiler. However if you know I my hobby you can target me with your new drill bit and be better yet. Though the largest advertisers don't care. Coke doesn't care that I don't like soda, they still want to target me just in case I'm called to bring drinks to some event. Ford can safely assume all Americans own a car and be close enough to right. Likewise everyone uses toilet paper (bidet users can be ignored) and soap (if you don't use soap you should be the highest target, though the ads perhaps should be different from those who use soap)
- godelski 6y ago
  Coke doesn't advertise to get you to buy the product. In many situations you don't actually have a choice (restaurant, theatre, etc). They advertise to make you feel a certain way about the brand. Car companies do something similar. They aren't advertising to get you to buy the car but associate a certain prestige with the vehicle which in turn makes their actual target buy their car. I'm not sure why everyone thinks ads are strictly about buying things. There's political ads, religious ads, pubic service announcements, etc. Ads are versatile.
  - bluGill 6y ago

Closi 6y ago

> The privacy debate is woefully lopsided by people who have never spent a dime marketing. Why should marketers influence how much privacy I have? Their incentive is for me to have as little privacy as possible. This is like saying anti-war campaigns are woefully lopsided by people who have never sold munitions.

minieggs 6y ago

A measly 1% for the loss of our online privacy?

jariel 6y ago
The economy is growing 2-3% these days, so another point on that is about a 30% increase in growth and would be a spectacular for humanity. Your privacy is not compromised by Facebook. Nobody is harmed. There are zero cases of people being hurt or their lives being denigrated due to targeted advertising. FB is not perfect, I think there are better ways, I don't like them, but it's hyperbolic to suggest there is material systematic harm. Nobody is really losing that much.
- geoduck14 6y ago
  > Your privacy is not compromised by Facebook Do you and I live in different universes? The one I live in blamed FB for allowing 3rd partner apps to download loads of personal information, and then use it to send targeted adds to influence an election. Also, adds spreading misinformation about Covid 19. At the early part of FB, kids could upload pictures with their EXIF data that included GPS coordinates- which were then used for kidnapping or serial molestation. With location tracking for adds, no one even needs a legitimate reason to buy location data. Thus can be used for thugs to track down and kill people they don't like.
  - jariel 6y ago
    You are crossing streams. Nobody is harmed by virtue of invasion of their privacy. Ads, which relate to misinformation about COVID and elections are completely separate issue, and basically have nothing to do with the detailed nature of targeting. 'Harmful Ads' can be on any platform in the world - Google, Television, Magazines, Billboards. There is no harm to you due to the fact that FB has a 90% chance of knowing your gender, age, and a couple of your interests. None.