6 ms·

My old coworkers had a story about this. Back in 2012 the romney campaign was spending so much money on facebook ads they couldn't be served fast enough. Cowork

My old coworkers had a story about this. Back in 2012 the romney campaign was spending so much money on facebook ads they couldn't be served fast enough. Coworker was told to turn off the "don't show me ads like this again" functionality for Romney so they could get more views. I don't have numbers, but it's hard to fathom how difficult it would be to literally run out of people to advertise to at facebooks scale.

whimsicalism 4y ago
> it's hard to fathom how difficult it would be to literally run out of people to advertise to at facebooks scale.f Probably because they were doing hyperspecific targeting, not because FB literally didn't have any more users to serve ads. I doubt political ads are a major part of the mix - for one, there is little evidence that they are all that effective compared to TV ads.
- lozenge 4y ago
  We are talking about a campaign spending almost $20 billion a month, admittedly Facebook ads would only be a part of that, but why is it unrealistic that they ran out of ad spots to buy?
  - whimsicalism 4y ago
    I don't know where you're getting your numbers from but they are definitely not correct (worked in campaign finance tech for a bit).
  - jimmygrapes 4y ago
    I could see $20 million a month, but billion doesn't work here since the Romney campaign didn't spend even one billion[0]. Is this one of those weird "billion means something different in my country" things? Because even then, the miscommunication is usually between billion (10^9 in most English) and trillion (10^12), in short scale[1]. [0]: https://www.fec.gov/data/candidate/P80003353/?tab=summary https://www.fec.gov/data/candidate/P80003353/?tab=summary [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales
    - paledot 4y ago
      No, pretty sure "million" means 10^6 everywhere.
  - paledot 4y ago
    At $20b/mo, you could literally buy the TV networks and show whatever programming you wanted. Or make a decent down payment on Facebook.

whimsicalism 4y ago

> it's hard to fathom how difficult it would be to literally run out of people to advertise to at facebooks scale.f Probably because they were doing hyperspecific targeting, not because FB literally didn't have any more users to serve ads. I doubt political ads are a major part of the mix - for one, there is little evidence that they are all that effective compared to TV ads.

lozenge 4y ago
We are talking about a campaign spending almost $20 billion a month, admittedly Facebook ads would only be a part of that, but why is it unrealistic that they ran out of ad spots to buy?
- whimsicalism 4y ago
  I don't know where you're getting your numbers from but they are definitely not correct (worked in campaign finance tech for a bit).
- jimmygrapes 4y ago
  I could see $20 million a month, but billion doesn't work here since the Romney campaign didn't spend even one billion[0]. Is this one of those weird "billion means something different in my country" things? Because even then, the miscommunication is usually between billion (10^9 in most English) and trillion (10^12), in short scale[1]. [0]: https://www.fec.gov/data/candidate/P80003353/?tab=summary https://www.fec.gov/data/candidate/P80003353/?tab=summary [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales
  - paledot 4y ago
    No, pretty sure "million" means 10^6 everywhere.
- paledot 4y ago
  At $20b/mo, you could literally buy the TV networks and show whatever programming you wanted. Or make a decent down payment on Facebook.