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You’d think that if they knew so much then they’d know to stop serving me ads for services I’ll literally never use. I am very surprised at how bad the ads I ge
by bradlys 5y ago
You’d think that if they knew so much then they’d know to stop serving me ads for services I’ll literally never use. I am very surprised at how bad the ads I get are and how much they miss the mark and are a complete waste of money.
I get that for some people advertisers seem omniscient but man do they miss the mark with me. Getting Trump ads (I may as well carry a bash the fash bat) and advertisements for services that I am completely against. It’s like, “how fucking dumb is the algorithm? Do they really think I want to work in an Amazon warehouse when I make $400K/yr??”
- chihuahua 5y agoI have the same experience. The only thing Facebook has figured out about me is that I like bicycling (because I post about nothing but bicycling on Facebook.) Other than that, their ads are complete nonsense.
- nraynaud 5y agoThey know everything but they are completely unable to use it for advertisement. The only time I had a relevant ad was retargetting (which is also hit or miss since you might have made your purchase). The only people who know how to use it efficiently are the police when they want to arrest people who organize or participate in demonstrations.
- otabdeveloper4 5y ago> They know everything but they are completely unable to use it for advertisement. You're almost right. The data they collect wasn't ever intended to be used for advertising purposes. They do it because they seek to pivot from adtech to the much, much more lucrative and entrenched govtech in the future.
- jjoonathan 5y agoIf an untargeted Trump ad impression costs $.02, targeting is worth no more than $.01 to the ad buyer. Meanwhile, the information might be worth $.10 to the local DNC or $5 to a prospective employer. The information would need to be laundered for the latter use case, but that's quite doable and economically so. One use and price point doesn't necessarily preclude the other but discriminatory pricing is easy to arbitrage in the information market, so in practice it makes sense to ditch the low value applications in order to fully extract revenue from the high value applications. I wish bad ad targeting meant that this wasn't happening, but wishful thinking doesn't make it so :/
- cle 5y agoThey don't serve the ad that is most relevant to you, or even the ad that you are most likely to click on, they serve the ad that advertisers are willing to spend the most on.
- bradlys 5y ago> they serve the ad that advertisers are willing to spend the most on. I guess my point is - why spend any money on me with these specific ads? They're not going to have any positive outcome. How many leftists get shown a Trump ad and are like, "Hell yeah I'm gonna donate/vote for Trump!" - it can't be any amount that makes it worth it...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- cle 5y agoI can imagine an endless number of scenarios where the person setting up the targeting doesn't particularly care about the efficiency. E.g. they were told to spend the entire budget, and can only do that with blanket targeting, and they'd rather just follow orders than push back.
- kevinventullo 5y agoIt depends. There are ad products in which one pays per click, in which case optimizing for click through rate is more directly incentivized.
- lobocinza 5y agoI wonder how it would know as I never click or see ads. But statically people click.
- TomSwirly 5y agoWhy would an economically rational advertiser spend money advertising to someone who will never buy their product?