5 ms·

When you setup a facebook ad, you literally say to them: spend $100 per day. Then Facebook has a 6 hour outage. Facebook can then show more ads to users per ti

by zpeti 5y ago

When you setup a facebook ad, you literally say to them: spend $100 per day. Then Facebook has a 6 hour outage. Facebook can then show more ads to users per time on Facebook, to get to the $100 per day. Or it can only spend $75 that day. I imagine some advertisers will prefer the first option, some the second. Facebook's machine learning algorithms will do something. But I don't see the massively malicious intent here. Most likely this isn't even a human decision. The algorithms just know then have to spend $100 per day. Fine, if there really are 50% less conversions, that's an issue, but frankly 6 hours won't really matter.

ctvo 5y ago
> Fine, if there really are 50% less conversions, that's an issue, but frankly 6 hours won't really matter. You buried the lede with things we already know for some reason. Two things: - It's 6 hours and 60 million dollars to them, which is absolutely nothing, but they risked harming their customers (advertisers) over it. This was Facebook's screw-up, and now they're passing it on to their advertisers. When you view advertisers as captured, you worry less about their experience and attempt to extract as much value as possible. - It's systemic. Someone in another thread mentioned there are good people at Facebook, and they can't reconcile the behavior exposed in internal documents with those good people. This is a great example. When your performance is tied to metrics like advertiser spend, even when you had the largest outage in your recent history, you'll immediately hop on afterwards to direct your team to try and extract the most money out of advertisers possible to make up for it. These individual incentives add up to form the predatory company that we see externally.
- stickfigure 5y ago
  I think it's a bit too early to break out the outrage cannon. This is just an automated system. They're probably still putting out the fires and assessing damage. It will be some time before somebody can assess the data and figure out what "the right thing" for customers is. If you were an ad customer during this period and you feel you weren't getting your expected value, ask for a credit? If you weren't - why are you so upset? Are you just looking for some excuse to feel angry at Facebook?
  - ctvo 5y ago
    > I think it's a bit too early to break out the outrage cannon. This is just an automated system. Maybe? I'm not in the ads space. I don't know if there are automated systems built in with "you now only have 16 hours to display the ads, display them even when they're less relevant". > If you were an ad customer during this period and you feel you weren't getting your expected value, ask for a credit? Why do customers need to do this when Facebook messed up, and had to learn about this, and look into performance, from a source other than Facebook? > If you weren't - why are you so upset? Are you just looking for some excuse to feel angry at Facebook? Y u mad bro? hasn't worked in quite a while.
    - solveit 5y ago
      > Why do customers need to do this when Facebook messed up, and had to learn about this, and look into performance, from a source other than Facebook? Have you bought anything from anyone ever...?
- kritiko 5y ago
  Some advertisers - e.g. large CPG with branding goals - might care more about even delivery and spending the budget than performance. That said, it seems wrong to use accelerated delivery for anybody using the Facebook pixel for conversion optimization.
- auggierose 5y ago
  If you say 60 million is absolutely nothing, then it is also clear that no ethics whatsoever will survive unsupervised in that kind of climate. No matter how good intentions initially were.
roland35 5y ago
I think it's also 6 prime hours of the day too - if it was down between 12-6am I'm sure that wouldn't have been nearly a big of a problem (in the US at least)

by zpeti 5y ago

ctvo 5y ago

> Fine, if there really are 50% less conversions, that's an issue, but frankly 6 hours won't really matter. You buried the lede with things we already know for some reason. Two things: - It's 6 hours and 60 million dollars to them, which is absolutely nothing, but they risked harming their customers (advertisers) over it. This was Facebook's screw-up, and now they're passing it on to their advertisers. When you view advertisers as captured, you worry less about their experience and attempt to extract as much value as possible. - It's systemic. Someone in another thread mentioned there are good people at Facebook, and they can't reconcile the behavior exposed in internal documents with those good people. This is a great example. When your performance is tied to metrics like advertiser spend, even when you had the largest outage in your recent history, you'll immediately hop on afterwards to direct your team to try and extract the most money out of advertisers possible to make up for it. These individual incentives add up to form the predatory company that we see externally.

stickfigure 5y ago
I think it's a bit too early to break out the outrage cannon. This is just an automated system. They're probably still putting out the fires and assessing damage. It will be some time before somebody can assess the data and figure out what "the right thing" for customers is. If you were an ad customer during this period and you feel you weren't getting your expected value, ask for a credit? If you weren't - why are you so upset? Are you just looking for some excuse to feel angry at Facebook?
- ctvo 5y ago
  > I think it's a bit too early to break out the outrage cannon. This is just an automated system. Maybe? I'm not in the ads space. I don't know if there are automated systems built in with "you now only have 16 hours to display the ads, display them even when they're less relevant". > If you were an ad customer during this period and you feel you weren't getting your expected value, ask for a credit? Why do customers need to do this when Facebook messed up, and had to learn about this, and look into performance, from a source other than Facebook? > If you weren't - why are you so upset? Are you just looking for some excuse to feel angry at Facebook? Y u mad bro? hasn't worked in quite a while.
  - solveit 5y ago
    > Why do customers need to do this when Facebook messed up, and had to learn about this, and look into performance, from a source other than Facebook? Have you bought anything from anyone ever...?
kritiko 5y ago
Some advertisers - e.g. large CPG with branding goals - might care more about even delivery and spending the budget than performance. That said, it seems wrong to use accelerated delivery for anybody using the Facebook pixel for conversion optimization.
auggierose 5y ago
If you say 60 million is absolutely nothing, then it is also clear that no ethics whatsoever will survive unsupervised in that kind of climate. No matter how good intentions initially were.

roland35 5y ago

I think it's also 6 prime hours of the day too - if it was down between 12-6am I'm sure that wouldn't have been nearly a big of a problem (in the US at least)