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posted by Fnord666 on Monday February 26 2018, @08:47AM   Printer-friendly

Antonio García Martínez at Wired writes about the effects of scaled pricing based on algorithms in Facebook's advertisement auction. Just buying advertisements in the auction does not guarantee that the ads get through to the target audience so the "clickbaitiness" of the ad is estimated by algorithms which adjust the price. Ads estimated to be "clickbaity" by the algorithm get lower prices so more can be purchased with the same money. The more problematic the ad, the more cost effective it is for the buyer.

A canny marketer with really engaging (or outraging) content can goose their effective purchasing power at the ads auction, piggybacking on Facebook's estimation of their clickbaitiness to win many more auctions (for the same or less money) than an unengaging competitor. That's why, if you've noticed a News Feed ad that's pulling out all the stops (via provocative stock photography or other gimcrackery) to get you to click on it, it's partly because the advertiser is aiming to pump up their engagement levels and increase their exposure, all without paying any more money.

During the run-up to the election, the Trump and Clinton campaigns bid ruthlessly for the same online real estate in front of the same swing-state voters. But because Trump used provocative content to stoke social media buzz, and he was better able to drive likes, comments, and shares than Clinton, his bids received a boost from Facebook's click model, effectively winning him more media for less money. In essence, Clinton was paying Manhattan prices for the square footage on your smartphone's screen, while Trump was paying Detroit prices. Facebook users in swing states who felt Trump had taken over their news feeds may not have been hallucinating.

Thus the advertisement auction algorithms themselves were yet another major factor in the results of the 2016 US election.

See also: Trump and the weird attention economy of Facebook


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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @09:32AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @09:32AM (#643855)

    > your purchasing power is based on how useful you've been to society

    I find doctors to be vastly more useful to society than footballers, but I'm pretty sure their respective purchasing power doesn't reflect that.

    It takes only a moment to think of how your suggestion doesn't work. Perhaps put (more?) thought into it next time, if you want to convince anyone.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @09:39AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @09:39AM (#643856)

    Doctors are useful, sure, which is why they are highly compensated (and which is why their educations are so incredibly expensive).

    However, it turns out that the common man lives for Monday Night Football (or whatever). For so may people, the footballers are why Joe Plumber gets his ass out of bed to fix someone's toilet in the middle of the night: Joe Plumber wants to be able to throw a Super Bowl party for his friends and family.

    Get it yet?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @04:52PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 26 2018, @04:52PM (#644017)

      Not sure if I should mod this insightful, but you're correct on that observation. Like it or not, footballers are demonstrably more highly valued by society than doctors. An individual doctor may be extremely valuable at any given moment to somebody who's sick, but a footballer is valuable to millions and millions of fans year after year. The cumulative value of the footballer adds up quickly and surpasses the value any given doctor could ever hope to have.

      Perhaps if men were angels, they would not value footballers so highly, or maybe they would value footballers from their own local community more than a small, distant, elite class of athlete celebrities.

      When a football team wins the Superbowl, there's a chaotic celebration in the team's home town that can shut the entire city down for days.

      When a doctor discovers a treatment for an horrible condition previously thought untreatable, it's a bunch of meh all around. A paper gets published. There might be a news article. Nobody is out celebrating in the streets.

      If men want these priorities to be different, then men must decide in their own hearts that their priorities shall be different. Until then, footballers will be more valuable than doctors, because that is how men comparatively value those two professions in their hearts.

      How I wish men were angels so that they might celebrate advancements in the arts and sciences with the fervor they reserve for footballers.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 01 2018, @02:59AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 01 2018, @02:59AM (#645584)

    Same for janitors. In contrast to footballers, it's honest work and essential to the smooth operation of any school, business, or government office. Honest work ought to pay a livable salary, like it did for a while.

    Janitors have a big disadvantage over doctors because if they do their job well enough no one notices they're there. Just try working or even visiting a building where the janitors have been eliminated and outsourced to firms that really cut corners with the cleaning. Even if you are a slob, you will notice ... and not like it.