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With New Ad Platform, Facebook Opens Gates to Its Vault of User Data

190 points by 001sky 12y ago

spullara 12y ago
If you thought that retargeting was bad because you saw the same advertisements for the same things no matter where you were, you haven't seen anything yet.
arn 12y ago
People have always asked for a solid Google Adsense competitor. Maybe this will be it. Though looks like it's not wide open yet, publishers have to apply/ be certified: http://atlassolutions.com/partners/ http://atlassolutions.com/partners/ But you could imagine this being pretty massive.
- sharkweek 12y ago
  I will certainly test it out on all my sites - honestly I wonder what took so long, adsense has been ripe for competition for too long now
  - adventured 12y ago
    Facebook is the only platform that has the scale necessary in the english speaking world to attempt a full-blown competitor to AdSense. I'd suspect that Facebook's relatively slow crawl toward full monetization is part of the reason they didn't do it sooner. They're just now getting the ad machine up to speed. I'm also curious to see what kind of results Amazon's new ad network efforts yield. Narrower scope in some regards, but they obviously have incredibly valuable data.
- Donzo 12y ago
  Google's got a ten-year headstart in this domain. It'd be great to see a worthy product from a formidable competitor, but I'm going to wait a while to hear some of the experiences of other publishers before I implement. I doubt that they're truly ready to compete with the AdSense platform at this point.
ThomPete 12y ago
I still think the primary problem is that Facebook does not understand intent and so it will still be a 2nd class citizen compared to Google.
- joelrunyon 12y ago
  That's the same problem google has w/ display ads. In this sense FB would have an advantage anyway because their demo targeting is much, much more precise.
- melvinmt 12y ago
  They're getting pretty good though at predicting intent. A couple months ago, I was looking for a cheap hotel in San Diego on several travel websites outside of Facebook. I didn't click any FB like buttons on those websites but not much later "Hotels in San Diego" ads started appearing in my feed.
  - falsestprophet 12y ago
    Ad networks have cookies on the travel sites you visited http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_retargeting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_retargeting
  - chriogenix 12y ago
    Those sites probably cookied you with an FBX retargeting pixel and then followed you to FB.
  - dirkgently 12y ago
    > They're getting pretty good though at predicting intent. Yes, by tracking you to other sites - you know the sites you thought were not facebook.
- shostack 12y ago
  FB has its hooks into many services as an authentication provider and sharing channel. There is plenty of intent to be mined there. Definitely different than what Google or Amazon have, for sure, but just different--not necessarily inferior depending on the usage.
cletus 12y ago
Advertising is a tricky business. Facebook's Like button was really a brilliant move by Zuckerberg because it essentially gave FB a tracking page of the majority of the Internet. I don't mean this in a nefarious way: this is how display advertising works. A cookie allows the advertiser to see what sites you visit and, from your behaviour, develop a profile of your interests, likely age/gender, etc (all based on modelling). I should also point out that before the inevitable cries about privacy, an advertiser doesn't care about you, specifically. They care about the characteristics of groups of people because that's the only way statistical modelling works anyway. If you visit some fishing sites, you as an individual may or may not be interested in fishing. Take 1000 people like you and there's a much higher chance that a member of that group is much more interested in fishing than the general population. Anyway, I thought a couple of years ago that FB was poised to become a major player in the display advertising business. This hasn't come to pass. Not because they couldn't. They simply have chosen not to go down that path. They don't' want to risk cheapening their platform by becoming another AdSense (which is the lowest CPM you can get and is really for the very long tail). This is one reason advertising is tricky. It's a balancing act where you're trying to cultivate premium publishers and advertisers while segmenting both (premium, remnant, long tail, etc) without cheapening the premium side, which is where you make all your money. So you can buy an impression on the WSJ through a guaranteed reservation. This by far generates the most money for the site and is how the WSJ would like you to buy advertising. Still, they can't sell all their impressions this way so there are various sources for monetizing so-called "remnant inventory". Thing is, you don't want your premium advertisers buying impressions through those (cheaper) channels instead. So Facebook seems to clearly be protecting its potential value. It really is potential value until it's realized. I have a theory about this: I don't think all that data we give Facebook is actually all that valuable. What sites you visit on the Internet vs what you tell Facebook is really the difference between what you do and what you say. What you say is filtered through how you perveive yourself, how you think others perceive you and how you want them to perceive you. What you do (IMHO) is a far more genuine representation. So time will tell. I think at this point if you see FB enter the display advertising space, it's a de facto admission of failure (meaning it hasn't met expectations) of monetizing all that data. Disclaimer: I work on display advertising for Google.
- 12y ago
7Figures2Commas 12y ago
For anybody asking the question, "Why Atlas?", please see http://atlassolutions.com/why-atlas/introduction/ http://atlassolutions.com/why-atlas/introduction/: > New possibilities for a new advertising reality. Atlas drives advertising impact for today’s multifaceted brand journeys. A lot has been written about Facebook's epic engineering staff, but the copywriting talent the company employs is clearly second to none too.
- hyperbovine 12y ago
  I miss Bill Hicks.
- ghuntley 12y ago
  Two slight typos on the signup call to action however: Atlas, a next generation ad serving and measurment platform, lets advertisers, agencies, publishers and partners increase results through the poiewr of real world data. Find out how it can work for you.
  - 7Figures2Commas 12y ago
    Type fast and misspeel things.
  - rschroed 12y ago
    fixed, thanks
Taek 12y ago
I think the thing that frustrates me the most about all of this is not the privacy, but the fact that Facebook gets exclusive access to data that I think is rightfully public knowledge. I'm fine with advertisers knowing that I really enjoy hiking, what my salary is, etc., but I don't like that they have to go through Facebook to get that knowledge. Ideally, they would go through me, or even better some publicly available repository of data that I've allowed to be assembled. But there is also data that I may not want to be public knowledge. If Facebook scans my chat logs, then Facebook knows a lot about me that I would not want some of my friends and family knowing. And I wouldn't be surprised if their TOS permits them to scan my chat logs. And you can also do interesting oracle attacks with this. Let's say I'm trying to figure out if my son is homosexual. (Substitute for any fact Facebook may know, and for any person you want to investigate). I already know a ton of things about my son. Age, where he lives, what sports he plays, his favorite foods, etc. So I create one really specific ad that's guaranteed to include only my son and maybe a few other people. This one is only shown to homosexuals. Then I create an alternate ad that targets the same group, but only heterosexuals. Then I just need to watch which ad appears on my sons computer, and I suddenly know what Facebook thinks his sexual orientation is.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- ChrisAntaki 12y ago
  > If Facebook scans my chat logs There's evidence of scanning private updates & comments, going back to 2012 [1]. We could assume chat messages would be fair game in Facebook's eyes, though I haven't seen any confirmation. [1] http://allthingsd.com/20120112/facebook-gives-politico-deep-access-to-users-political-sentiments/ http://allthingsd.com/20120112/facebook-gives-politico-deep-...
- markcuban 12y ago
  Or you could just, you know, log into his Facebook...
- r00fus 12y ago
  Facebook has already declared your data (i.e., the data you entered into Facebook) as theirs, to monetize at will. There are several rational responses, but when some other entity keeps drinking your privacy milkshake, maybe the best way to respond is to poison the well. Make any or all of the valid profile data fake. Potentially change it once in a while to something else also false. Don't invite people you normally would friend. Definitely don't use the profile for anything important.
lingben 12y ago
facebook ads are junk and have been proven to be so before you waste any money, watch these two videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ZqXlHl65g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ZqXlHl65g
- dangrossman 12y ago
  If you're not buying likes, then the quality of likes doesn't matter. Many (most?) of the ads on the sidebar aren't for page likes, they're links to businesses/products, like most other ads on the net. ROI is easily measured there -- more revenue generated via sales/signups than the cost of the ad or you cancel it. Facebook ads are profitable for many businesses. They are for mine.
  - shostack 12y ago
    I agreed with you up to the "ROI is easily measured there" part Dan. I've never used Improvely so I'm not sure how deep down the cross-channel attribution rabbit hole you get with it, but social, and display in general, are far from being solved problems with regards to measuring ROI. There are of course a few cases where ROI is indeed easily measured. Someone sees a FB ad, clicks it, and converts without any other touch-points in their path to conversion. I think we can all agree FB would get 100% attribution credit in this instance. But the second you throw in any sort of existing brand awareness generated by other channels, or FB's contribution to said awareness for driving conversions in more last-touch inclined channels, it becomes very murky indeed. There's a reason all of the 3rd party dynamic attribution vendors like VisualIQ, Convertro and Adometry have been bought up by the big players. Would love to know your thoughts on solving for this problem though as it is increasingly a large one as the targeting side of the display world continues to eclipse progress of actually measuring the performance of said display efforts at a staggering rate.
    - blumkvist 12y ago
      Well, you said it yourself. Track everything you possibly can, then get an SQL server and start modeling. Nowadays, you can do basically everything you need in excel. I wouldn't say it's easy by no means, but if you are dedicated you can make it work. Just get a book about MMM and start tinkering with the data.
fimbaz 12y ago
Who puts gates on a vault?
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
atmosx 12y ago
I created a secondary account only to handle our pharmacy's facebook page to promote our brick and stones shop. There's no eshop yet, so I tried to run ads (spend about 30 EUR so far), but the targeting is awfully off the mark. I didn't spam any of my friends, tried just to use ads. Results are lousy. I targeted a specific Greek city, surrounding areas and specific ages and all I get are 'likes' from people in other cities, which have zero value to me at the moment. So in a sense I'm just waisting money. I don't know if this new system will be available for small shops, but the current system for narrow areas (> 50k inhabitants) doesn't seem to work properly.
- blumkvist 12y ago
  Oh WOW. 30 euro and no results? Facebook ads don't work!!!!
  - edoloughlin 12y ago
    Oh WOW. 30 euro and no results? Facebook ads don't work!!!! Do you really need to be so snarky to make your point? It makes it unpleasant for everyone else to browse comments. Re. your point, if you want to dip your toe in the water to see if FB ads work for you, then how much do you need to spend? I think starting at < €100 is reasonable.
    - blumkvist 12y ago
      Yeah, I'm just cranky before my coffee. It's my bad. It's not a matter of total spend. Advertising, and marketing in general is about a lot of tests. The best way to approach it is to read a lot of material beforehand. Then map out the outcomes you want out of the advertising. Figure out what your KPIs are, set goals for those KPIs based on what you've read. Then set a daily budget according to your goals. And start running tests. After a month you can look at your results and see what worked, what didn't and you can start thinking why those things happened or what didn't happen. The budget is something specific for every individual business. You can't really say, you need $X to get started. It is not an easy process. That's why I sometimes overreact to statements like OP's. Advertising is not something you can do in 15 minutes before bed. You need to educate yourself, be dedicated and persistent to make it work continuesly. If you want to make it work, I suggest Neil Petel's quicksprout university for a very, very basic introduction. http://www.quicksprout.com/university/ http://www.quicksprout.com/university/
samingrassia 12y ago
Apples to apples, this is less of an answer to adwords and more along the lines of an adsense competitor. IMHO This launch will take a huge bite out of quantcast + any cookie pooling/dmp companies. It will also be interesting to see how adroll and other retargeting companies end up fairing. Budget-wise, I think this will expand the pie for over all ad spend rather than suck out any air from googles ad platforms. Chris Dixon basically describes this game plan 4 years ago, http://cdixon.org/2010/05/15/facebook-is-about-to-try-to-dominate-display-ads-the-way-google-dominates-text-ads/ http://cdixon.org/2010/05/15/facebook-is-about-to-try-to-dom...
- perlpimp 12y ago
  what is interesting I think, it that facebook more or less might make all private data peddlers irrelevant. I could be bad or it could be better in a sense that your data will be in one place instead of a thousand different unknown places. it would be easier to target by eff such well branded target.. IMHO.
chuckcode 12y ago
It will be interesting to see how advertisers take advantage of this data without alienating people. A lot of people don't mind seeing a targeted ad on Facebook since they have a relationship with them but would be disturbed to see a very target ad in another app. Target saw this when trying to deploy their targeting to pregnant women, they had to camouflage their pregnancy product coupons with other random ones as "some women react badly" [1]. Also article claims that Facebook isn't selling your data but aren't they really if advertisers are going to get to set a cookie for usual advertising accounting of reach and view caps? E.g. Buy campaign targeting users with qualities X,Y & Z and then set a cooking on users who saw the ads so now I know they are all X,Y & Z. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.h...
- wodenokoto 12y ago
  I'd expect it to go one of two ways: Either you just happen to see a lot of ads all over the web for bars and day trips in Thailand after you did a Facebook check-in at the airport saying you're on your way to Thailand Or The ads will be similar to what you see on FB, eg your friend Jonathan likes the new diet coke, why don't you try some, john? With the ad clearly outlined as not being part of the site with a "ad delivered by Facebook" disclaimer and clear FB styling.
deanclatworthy 12y ago
The key questions I have are: - Will this respect DoNotTrack? - Will Facebook users be able to opt-out of this targetting? - Will it respect my privacy settings when I set all my "personal" data to "Only me" or "Friends only"? I find it quite abhorrent that a service, so personal, is now truly using that data against me whilst I'm outside of the service. I will be among the first to leave if the answer to all these questions is no.
- wodenokoto 12y ago
  The people selling ad space as well as the people buying ads won't have access to your personal data, so yes, they will be able to utilize your "only me" personal data. You ask FB to target certain profiles and FB handles the rest. This is considered keeping your private data private (and rightly so IMHO, but I know some people who disagree) I don't know if the "like" buttons around the web respects the DoNotTrack, but I expect no changes in Facebook's tracking behaviour.
jhuckestein 12y ago
Does anyone know if the new system supports the custom audience feature (targeting specific phone numbers or email addresses)?
unclebucknasty 12y ago
The article re-articulates the requisite disclaimer that Facebook does not sell or reveal "personally identifiable" information about you. This is misleading on both abstract and practical levels. Practically, if a company runs an ad that targets certain data points, then converts a customer based on that ad, then the company now knows that those data points apply to that customer. Abstractly, at what point do we define ourselves as "personally identifiable" these days, and when does it stop mattering? That is, we spend a great deal of time online generating data-based profiles that become very real identities in their own right. If these identities are of a world where we spend so much time and are effectively being bought and sold, then does it matter that our street address or first name isn't included? Anyone who has ever felt creeped out or "big-brothered" by retargeting is experiencing exactly this breach of his/her alter online identity.
prr 12y ago
Anyone know if Whatsapp will be using Atlas, either overtly (displaying ads), or covertly (harvesting data in the background)?
mark_l_watson 12y ago
Question: I usually use one web browser for social media and gmail, and another web browser for everything else. Does this positively effect privacy? It certainly effects the utility to advertising frameworks for tracking cookies but I would think that IP address tracking might be enough to track users.
- danielbarla 12y ago
  I suspect it won't negatively affect privacy directly (unless you're taking less care as a result of your feeling of safety). That said, mechanisms such as flash cross-browser cookies are technically possible [1], and I'm sure are in use in the wild. [1] see for example the evercookie (http://samy.pl/evercookie/ http://samy.pl/evercookie/), which even lists the various delivery mechanisms for cross-browser persistence, about halfway down the page.
- w1ntermute 12y ago
  Related: I use Incognito Mode in Chrome for browsing any sites that I'm not logged into. Also, I run Ghostery. Do either of these things actually work?
  - sjg007 12y ago
    Well it will prevent persistent cookies across sessions, but you can also be tracked by ip address.
danvoell 12y ago
Anyone else think it is a bad move that they have a separate site? Atlas by Facebook - http://atlassolutions.com/ http://atlassolutions.com/. I understand that they want to sell ads to companies but they aren't fooling anyone (nor are they trying to) and they might end up confusing more people than they help.
- brandnewlow 12y ago
  Atlas is an established brand in the big agency/brand space. For now that's what this product is focused on.
jrochkind1 12y ago
> The Facebook login is most useful on mobile devices, where traditional web tracking tools like cookies and pixel tags do not work. If a person is logged into the Facebook app on a smartphone, the company has the ability to see what other apps he or she is using and could show ads within those apps.

190 points by 001sky 12y ago

If you thought that retargeting was bad because you saw the same advertisements for the same things no matter where you were, you haven't seen anything yet.

arn 12y ago

People have always asked for a solid Google Adsense competitor. Maybe this will be it. Though looks like it's not wide open yet, publishers have to apply/ be certified: http://atlassolutions.com/partners/ http://atlassolutions.com/partners/ But you could imagine this being pretty massive.

sharkweek 12y ago
I will certainly test it out on all my sites - honestly I wonder what took so long, adsense has been ripe for competition for too long now
- adventured 12y ago
  Facebook is the only platform that has the scale necessary in the english speaking world to attempt a full-blown competitor to AdSense. I'd suspect that Facebook's relatively slow crawl toward full monetization is part of the reason they didn't do it sooner. They're just now getting the ad machine up to speed. I'm also curious to see what kind of results Amazon's new ad network efforts yield. Narrower scope in some regards, but they obviously have incredibly valuable data.
Donzo 12y ago
Google's got a ten-year headstart in this domain. It'd be great to see a worthy product from a formidable competitor, but I'm going to wait a while to hear some of the experiences of other publishers before I implement. I doubt that they're truly ready to compete with the AdSense platform at this point.

ThomPete 12y ago

I still think the primary problem is that Facebook does not understand intent and so it will still be a 2nd class citizen compared to Google.

joelrunyon 12y ago
That's the same problem google has w/ display ads. In this sense FB would have an advantage anyway because their demo targeting is much, much more precise.
melvinmt 12y ago
They're getting pretty good though at predicting intent. A couple months ago, I was looking for a cheap hotel in San Diego on several travel websites outside of Facebook. I didn't click any FB like buttons on those websites but not much later "Hotels in San Diego" ads started appearing in my feed.
- falsestprophet 12y ago
  Ad networks have cookies on the travel sites you visited http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_retargeting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behavioral_retargeting
- chriogenix 12y ago
  Those sites probably cookied you with an FBX retargeting pixel and then followed you to FB.
- dirkgently 12y ago
  > They're getting pretty good though at predicting intent. Yes, by tracking you to other sites - you know the sites you thought were not facebook.
shostack 12y ago
FB has its hooks into many services as an authentication provider and sharing channel. There is plenty of intent to be mined there. Definitely different than what Google or Amazon have, for sure, but just different--not necessarily inferior depending on the usage.

cletus 12y ago

Advertising is a tricky business. Facebook's Like button was really a brilliant move by Zuckerberg because it essentially gave FB a tracking page of the majority of the Internet. I don't mean this in a nefarious way: this is how display advertising works. A cookie allows the advertiser to see what sites you visit and, from your behaviour, develop a profile of your interests, likely age/gender, etc (all based on modelling). I should also point out that before the inevitable cries about privacy, an advertiser doesn't care about you, specifically. They care about the characteristics of groups of people because that's the only way statistical modelling works anyway. If you visit some fishing sites, you as an individual may or may not be interested in fishing. Take 1000 people like you and there's a much higher chance that a member of that group is much more interested in fishing than the general population. Anyway, I thought a couple of years ago that FB was poised to become a major player in the display advertising business. This hasn't come to pass. Not because they couldn't. They simply have chosen not to go down that path. They don't' want to risk cheapening their platform by becoming another AdSense (which is the lowest CPM you can get and is really for the very long tail). This is one reason advertising is tricky. It's a balancing act where you're trying to cultivate premium publishers and advertisers while segmenting both (premium, remnant, long tail, etc) without cheapening the premium side, which is where you make all your money. So you can buy an impression on the WSJ through a guaranteed reservation. This by far generates the most money for the site and is how the WSJ would like you to buy advertising. Still, they can't sell all their impressions this way so there are various sources for monetizing so-called "remnant inventory". Thing is, you don't want your premium advertisers buying impressions through those (cheaper) channels instead. So Facebook seems to clearly be protecting its potential value. It really is potential value until it's realized. I have a theory about this: I don't think all that data we give Facebook is actually all that valuable. What sites you visit on the Internet vs what you tell Facebook is really the difference between what you do and what you say. What you say is filtered through how you perveive yourself, how you think others perceive you and how you want them to perceive you. What you do (IMHO) is a far more genuine representation. So time will tell. I think at this point if you see FB enter the display advertising space, it's a de facto admission of failure (meaning it hasn't met expectations) of monetizing all that data. Disclaimer: I work on display advertising for Google.

12y ago

7Figures2Commas 12y ago

For anybody asking the question, "Why Atlas?", please see http://atlassolutions.com/why-atlas/introduction/ http://atlassolutions.com/why-atlas/introduction/: > New possibilities for a new advertising reality. Atlas drives advertising impact for today’s multifaceted brand journeys. A lot has been written about Facebook's epic engineering staff, but the copywriting talent the company employs is clearly second to none too.

hyperbovine 12y ago
I miss Bill Hicks.
ghuntley 12y ago
Two slight typos on the signup call to action however: Atlas, a next generation ad serving and measurment platform, lets advertisers, agencies, publishers and partners increase results through the poiewr of real world data. Find out how it can work for you.
- 7Figures2Commas 12y ago
  Type fast and misspeel things.
- rschroed 12y ago
  fixed, thanks

Taek 12y ago

I think the thing that frustrates me the most about all of this is not the privacy, but the fact that Facebook gets exclusive access to data that I think is rightfully public knowledge. I'm fine with advertisers knowing that I really enjoy hiking, what my salary is, etc., but I don't like that they have to go through Facebook to get that knowledge. Ideally, they would go through me, or even better some publicly available repository of data that I've allowed to be assembled. But there is also data that I may not want to be public knowledge. If Facebook scans my chat logs, then Facebook knows a lot about me that I would not want some of my friends and family knowing. And I wouldn't be surprised if their TOS permits them to scan my chat logs. And you can also do interesting oracle attacks with this. Let's say I'm trying to figure out if my son is homosexual. (Substitute for any fact Facebook may know, and for any person you want to investigate). I already know a ton of things about my son. Age, where he lives, what sports he plays, his favorite foods, etc. So I create one really specific ad that's guaranteed to include only my son and maybe a few other people. This one is only shown to homosexuals. Then I create an alternate ad that targets the same group, but only heterosexuals. Then I just need to watch which ad appears on my sons computer, and I suddenly know what Facebook thinks his sexual orientation is.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
ChrisAntaki 12y ago
> If Facebook scans my chat logs There's evidence of scanning private updates & comments, going back to 2012 [1]. We could assume chat messages would be fair game in Facebook's eyes, though I haven't seen any confirmation. [1] http://allthingsd.com/20120112/facebook-gives-politico-deep-access-to-users-political-sentiments/ http://allthingsd.com/20120112/facebook-gives-politico-deep-...
markcuban 12y ago
Or you could just, you know, log into his Facebook...
r00fus 12y ago
Facebook has already declared your data (i.e., the data you entered into Facebook) as theirs, to monetize at will. There are several rational responses, but when some other entity keeps drinking your privacy milkshake, maybe the best way to respond is to poison the well. Make any or all of the valid profile data fake. Potentially change it once in a while to something else also false. Don't invite people you normally would friend. Definitely don't use the profile for anything important.

lingben 12y ago

facebook ads are junk and have been proven to be so before you waste any money, watch these two videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ZqXlHl65g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ZqXlHl65g

dangrossman 12y ago
If you're not buying likes, then the quality of likes doesn't matter. Many (most?) of the ads on the sidebar aren't for page likes, they're links to businesses/products, like most other ads on the net. ROI is easily measured there -- more revenue generated via sales/signups than the cost of the ad or you cancel it. Facebook ads are profitable for many businesses. They are for mine.
- shostack 12y ago
  I agreed with you up to the "ROI is easily measured there" part Dan. I've never used Improvely so I'm not sure how deep down the cross-channel attribution rabbit hole you get with it, but social, and display in general, are far from being solved problems with regards to measuring ROI. There are of course a few cases where ROI is indeed easily measured. Someone sees a FB ad, clicks it, and converts without any other touch-points in their path to conversion. I think we can all agree FB would get 100% attribution credit in this instance. But the second you throw in any sort of existing brand awareness generated by other channels, or FB's contribution to said awareness for driving conversions in more last-touch inclined channels, it becomes very murky indeed. There's a reason all of the 3rd party dynamic attribution vendors like VisualIQ, Convertro and Adometry have been bought up by the big players. Would love to know your thoughts on solving for this problem though as it is increasingly a large one as the targeting side of the display world continues to eclipse progress of actually measuring the performance of said display efforts at a staggering rate.
  - blumkvist 12y ago
    Well, you said it yourself. Track everything you possibly can, then get an SQL server and start modeling. Nowadays, you can do basically everything you need in excel. I wouldn't say it's easy by no means, but if you are dedicated you can make it work. Just get a book about MMM and start tinkering with the data.

fimbaz 12y ago

Who puts gates on a vault?

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

atmosx 12y ago

I created a secondary account only to handle our pharmacy's facebook page to promote our brick and stones shop. There's no eshop yet, so I tried to run ads (spend about 30 EUR so far), but the targeting is awfully off the mark. I didn't spam any of my friends, tried just to use ads. Results are lousy. I targeted a specific Greek city, surrounding areas and specific ages and all I get are 'likes' from people in other cities, which have zero value to me at the moment. So in a sense I'm just waisting money. I don't know if this new system will be available for small shops, but the current system for narrow areas (> 50k inhabitants) doesn't seem to work properly.

blumkvist 12y ago
Oh WOW. 30 euro and no results? Facebook ads don't work!!!!
- edoloughlin 12y ago
  Oh WOW. 30 euro and no results? Facebook ads don't work!!!! Do you really need to be so snarky to make your point? It makes it unpleasant for everyone else to browse comments. Re. your point, if you want to dip your toe in the water to see if FB ads work for you, then how much do you need to spend? I think starting at < €100 is reasonable.
  - blumkvist 12y ago
    Yeah, I'm just cranky before my coffee. It's my bad. It's not a matter of total spend. Advertising, and marketing in general is about a lot of tests. The best way to approach it is to read a lot of material beforehand. Then map out the outcomes you want out of the advertising. Figure out what your KPIs are, set goals for those KPIs based on what you've read. Then set a daily budget according to your goals. And start running tests. After a month you can look at your results and see what worked, what didn't and you can start thinking why those things happened or what didn't happen. The budget is something specific for every individual business. You can't really say, you need $X to get started. It is not an easy process. That's why I sometimes overreact to statements like OP's. Advertising is not something you can do in 15 minutes before bed. You need to educate yourself, be dedicated and persistent to make it work continuesly. If you want to make it work, I suggest Neil Petel's quicksprout university for a very, very basic introduction. http://www.quicksprout.com/university/ http://www.quicksprout.com/university/

samingrassia 12y ago

Apples to apples, this is less of an answer to adwords and more along the lines of an adsense competitor. IMHO This launch will take a huge bite out of quantcast + any cookie pooling/dmp companies. It will also be interesting to see how adroll and other retargeting companies end up fairing. Budget-wise, I think this will expand the pie for over all ad spend rather than suck out any air from googles ad platforms. Chris Dixon basically describes this game plan 4 years ago, http://cdixon.org/2010/05/15/facebook-is-about-to-try-to-dominate-display-ads-the-way-google-dominates-text-ads/ http://cdixon.org/2010/05/15/facebook-is-about-to-try-to-dom...

perlpimp 12y ago
what is interesting I think, it that facebook more or less might make all private data peddlers irrelevant. I could be bad or it could be better in a sense that your data will be in one place instead of a thousand different unknown places. it would be easier to target by eff such well branded target.. IMHO.

chuckcode 12y ago

It will be interesting to see how advertisers take advantage of this data without alienating people. A lot of people don't mind seeing a targeted ad on Facebook since they have a relationship with them but would be disturbed to see a very target ad in another app. Target saw this when trying to deploy their targeting to pregnant women, they had to camouflage their pregnancy product coupons with other random ones as "some women react badly" [1]. Also article claims that Facebook isn't selling your data but aren't they really if advertisers are going to get to set a cookie for usual advertising accounting of reach and view caps? E.g. Buy campaign targeting users with qualities X,Y & Z and then set a cooking on users who saw the ads so now I know they are all X,Y & Z. [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.html http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/magazine/shopping-habits.h...

wodenokoto 12y ago
I'd expect it to go one of two ways: Either you just happen to see a lot of ads all over the web for bars and day trips in Thailand after you did a Facebook check-in at the airport saying you're on your way to Thailand Or The ads will be similar to what you see on FB, eg your friend Jonathan likes the new diet coke, why don't you try some, john? With the ad clearly outlined as not being part of the site with a "ad delivered by Facebook" disclaimer and clear FB styling.

deanclatworthy 12y ago

The key questions I have are: - Will this respect DoNotTrack? - Will Facebook users be able to opt-out of this targetting? - Will it respect my privacy settings when I set all my "personal" data to "Only me" or "Friends only"? I find it quite abhorrent that a service, so personal, is now truly using that data against me whilst I'm outside of the service. I will be among the first to leave if the answer to all these questions is no.

wodenokoto 12y ago
The people selling ad space as well as the people buying ads won't have access to your personal data, so yes, they will be able to utilize your "only me" personal data. You ask FB to target certain profiles and FB handles the rest. This is considered keeping your private data private (and rightly so IMHO, but I know some people who disagree) I don't know if the "like" buttons around the web respects the DoNotTrack, but I expect no changes in Facebook's tracking behaviour.

jhuckestein 12y ago

Does anyone know if the new system supports the custom audience feature (targeting specific phone numbers or email addresses)?

unclebucknasty 12y ago

The article re-articulates the requisite disclaimer that Facebook does not sell or reveal "personally identifiable" information about you. This is misleading on both abstract and practical levels. Practically, if a company runs an ad that targets certain data points, then converts a customer based on that ad, then the company now knows that those data points apply to that customer. Abstractly, at what point do we define ourselves as "personally identifiable" these days, and when does it stop mattering? That is, we spend a great deal of time online generating data-based profiles that become very real identities in their own right. If these identities are of a world where we spend so much time and are effectively being bought and sold, then does it matter that our street address or first name isn't included? Anyone who has ever felt creeped out or "big-brothered" by retargeting is experiencing exactly this breach of his/her alter online identity.

prr 12y ago

Anyone know if Whatsapp will be using Atlas, either overtly (displaying ads), or covertly (harvesting data in the background)?

mark_l_watson 12y ago

Question: I usually use one web browser for social media and gmail, and another web browser for everything else. Does this positively effect privacy? It certainly effects the utility to advertising frameworks for tracking cookies but I would think that IP address tracking might be enough to track users.

danielbarla 12y ago
I suspect it won't negatively affect privacy directly (unless you're taking less care as a result of your feeling of safety). That said, mechanisms such as flash cross-browser cookies are technically possible [1], and I'm sure are in use in the wild. [1] see for example the evercookie (http://samy.pl/evercookie/ http://samy.pl/evercookie/), which even lists the various delivery mechanisms for cross-browser persistence, about halfway down the page.
w1ntermute 12y ago
Related: I use Incognito Mode in Chrome for browsing any sites that I'm not logged into. Also, I run Ghostery. Do either of these things actually work?
- sjg007 12y ago
  Well it will prevent persistent cookies across sessions, but you can also be tracked by ip address.

danvoell 12y ago

Anyone else think it is a bad move that they have a separate site? Atlas by Facebook - http://atlassolutions.com/ http://atlassolutions.com/. I understand that they want to sell ads to companies but they aren't fooling anyone (nor are they trying to) and they might end up confusing more people than they help.

brandnewlow 12y ago
Atlas is an established brand in the big agency/brand space. For now that's what this product is focused on.

jrochkind1 12y ago

> The Facebook login is most useful on mobile devices, where traditional web tracking tools like cookies and pixel tags do not work. If a person is logged into the Facebook app on a smartphone, the company has the ability to see what other apps he or she is using and could show ads within those apps.