If FB was actually completely forbidden from tracking, I'd estimate 85% of small shopify stores would die with it. The winners would be giant marketplaces like Amazon, who would be the only reliable sources left of customer acquisition.
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.
@jariel can you share any resource for people looking to understand and dip their feet running their own FB ads?
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.
There is certainly a lot of information out there but much is generic, others are paid, and many are scams.
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.
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-h...
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)
If only 10% of those typing C++ would ever be interested in a course, then those are not bad numbers.
More nuanced: at the 'non-targeted' threshold the ad would not make sense at all, total inefficiency. At the targeted threshold of being able to target at least C++ devs, the ad probably starts to work.
That is the difference between a viable business and not
That means engagement, value creation, sales, C++ developers trained and ready for the market. This is extremely good for society. We definitely want aspiring C++ devs hooked up with quality courses.
This anecdote very tangibly demonstrates the effectiveness of targeting for individual companies ... but it also points to the market efficiency that comes along with good advertising.
If you have a startup, and you can't reach any of your audience, you're dead. This notion of 'word of mouth' is ridiculous as a business plan, it's exceedingly rare, and usually it's not that anyhow in reality - it's usually a form of effective social marketing by the early movers. Clubhouse for example is being helped by the 'celebrity' of the VCs behind it - they don't have mass market following, but a very avid following in a certain niche that will come onto the platform. I'm noticing a lot of Marc Andreseen on Clubhouse, too much for a busy VC, but not too much for someone who's hyping his own investment and bringing in a lot of viewers, helping out a lot of panels.
The essential nature of basic targeting is not controversial, it's quite obvious at least at the most crude level.
Targeted ads are unequivocally more effective than non targeted ads, on the aggregate - there is no dispute other than at the margins.
Do you think that advertising makeup to the general population has the same effectiveness than advertising it to women? Or women who have shown an interest in makeup?
Ads are complicated and nuanced, but everyone in the industry already knows this.
There will always be science at the margins as we discover the means by which people truly engage, but otherwise, there is no arguing with core demographic targeting. It would be like completely non-technical people saying "Javascript is completely ineffective because of null ambiguity" whereas it's universally used, and the limitations of JS are recognized to all but the most junior developers.
Literally just basic demographics, plus a few interest points ... that's all I think we need to do well of those could be reliable.
On the first point - they just don't know that much about us. That's what the whole post is about (!) They were lying advertisers ad to the probabilistic estimates of who we are.
Go here: https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated?hl=en
Google will show what they know about you if you have that on. It's not very accurate at all. It's very fuzzy. For me they have wrong age, a lot of wrong interests.
So they surprisingly don't know a lot, just because someone clicks on an add ... that is not a lot of information - there's so many reasons we click on ads. Google thinks I'm into cars and I don't even drive, I hate cars!
As for basic targeting - it's mostly what advertisers need. So age, education, income, zip code (or zip code classification), rough location would be great. Plus just a few, solid interests (real ones, not estimated) - and that would be a big step forward for ads.
So yes - our privacy is fairly aggressively invaded at the same time they can only glean so much from it. Seems like a Paradox.
Do you have any evidence to back this up? I can't find any published literature where Facebook has hinted this, including this paper [0] saying:
> As expected the most important thing is to have the right features: those capturing historical information about the user or ad dominate other types of features.
0. https://research.fb.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/practical...
Most targeted advertising, sure.
Targeted ads based on interests? Diet? General age range? Of course those will be more effective.
Showing me targeted ads for fitness products has been very effective, I have a yoga and a workout app I use that are both 100% due to targeted ads. I also have tried out various food products (keto cereal!) due to targeted ads.
Interest based ads work, if done well. Now that said, ads for stuff I already bought, eh, less so. Even worse if I buy something from an ad, get it home, unbox it, then google for help. Now I get ads trying to sell me the same product again. Though I'm not sure how horribly invasive ads would have to be to avoid that scenario.
I've generally found FB ads to be, honestly, useful at times.
What I really don't trust are kickstarter campaigns running YT ads. Shouts 'scam!' to me almost instantly.
Also that YT ad that was playing a few months ago for the $20 adjustable dumbbell set that went to a super shady site. (Normally adjustable dumbbells go for $500+...) It appeared to be a fake storefront, but YT kept happily running the ad day after day.
It was well targeted though. :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't buy from shopify or facebook anymore, and probably won't even if they clean up their act.
Most stores buy and hold inventory, taking on the risk of not selling that inventory. Dropshippers send the order to someone else to fulfil, and are essentially glorified lead generators.
There are certainly good small businesses, both on Shopify and elsewhere, and some would be hurt to some small degree by this change. I'm simply arguing that the majority of business which would go broke without the use of the FB ad system tracking panopticon are not the sort of small business which are societally useful or that we should mourn their loss.
"Small businesses going bankrupt" typically is thought of a negative thing, but there are flavors of small businesses where it is really a net societal good.
That's certainly selling drop-shippers short.
They provide products, at prices people are willing to pay for convenience, trustability, etc. They handle complaints, shoulder the risk of returns and/or damaged in shipment items, pay for their own advertising/marketing and more.
Many Tier-1 distributors enjoy their relationship with drop-shippers... and many customers enjoy that very same relationship too.
/s
Retail is dying, malls are bankrupt.
COVID amplified this change and small business struggles. Even big corps are losing retail to online sales, GME is a meme example lol.
Facebook disagrees. It's even taken out full-page newspaper ads to tell people that if small businesses don't advertise (and permit invasive tracking) on Facebook, they'll go out of business and take the economy with them.
LOL. This is quite a comment on their own opinion of their ad platform's influence.
And nothing of value was lost.
I wonder what the ecological impact of all these dropshippers is.
There is value to the consumers purchasing products - many of which are innovative and to be copied later once successful. It's a giant AB test.
There is also value to the business owners, small, medium and large.
You could apply that opinion to any product whether on shopify or even bigger open marketplaces like amazon, walmart
They are being asked to get user consent to track, very different things.