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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: 4, Touché) by stretch611 on Monday February 26 2018, @12:00PM (1 child)

    by stretch611 (6199) on Monday February 26 2018, @12:00PM (#643890)

    Yes, you won... barely... yet you lost the popular vote.

    Why?, How? Because South Park's vision of the election between a turd sandwich and a giant douche came true. There were as many democrats that hated Hillary as there were Republicans that hate trump.

    Who lost? The american people... regardless of the outcome.

    As for cyber savvy? Your internet usage of twitter is the most telling of all. It is about as intelligent as cats saying "I can has cheezburger." At least a small percentage of people found the latter humorous for a short period of time.

    --
    Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
    Starting Score:    1  point
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  • (Score: 2, Redundant) by realDonaldTrump on Monday February 26 2018, @04:45PM

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Monday February 26 2018, @04:45PM (#644010) Homepage Journal

    Our Constitution is great. We defend our Constitution, and we believe in the wisdom of our Founders. They worked very hard on that one. They were very smart guys, they put a lot of thought into it. Into, should we have elections. And how should our elections work. All in the Constitution. And they saw that going by the popular vote could bring many problems. Many problems. So they said, let's not do that, we'll have an Electoral College. Where you don't vote for the President. You vote for a guy. Or now we have some ladies in the mix, right? And a bunch of THOSE guys get together, they vote for the President. And it's worked very well. Even for Crooked Hillary and her supporters. Even though she lost OVERWHELMINGLY. Because it's worked very well for America. If she'd become President, very bad for our Country. As you know. And the Clintons & their people are part of our One Team, One People, One American Family. But they're not in my White Houses and that's a good thing. I know you agree on that one.

    2000, were you around in 2000? Let me tell you, we had a VERY SPECIAL election. Where, for a little while, people didn't know which way it would go. Bush or Gore, right? Very famous election at the time. Big debate over Florida, counting the votes in Florida. And recounting them. So many people say it was rigged by Low Energy Jeb. Obviously, it was rigged. People don't know this, but probably Gore's guys would have gotten into the Electoral College if they recounted a little bit differently -- not the way Gore asked for. But that didn't happen, we got Dubya. A TOTAL DISASTER, as everyone knows.

    And people said, what about the popular vote, let's go by the popular vote. So we can have our President Gore. Those are very FOOLISH people. Because the Bush campaign, the Gore campaign, they were campaigning all along to get their guys into the Electoral College. Not to win the popular vote. If you look at the popular vote, it was close. Like 500,000. If the Dems took out Ralph Nader -- people don't know, he was running for President -- probably not so close. The Clintons know some guys that do that kind of thing, you know? They call it wet work. But campaigning for the popular vote, very different kind of campaign. You go different places, you say different things. To play to the city folks more. And maybe, probably, Dubya could have won the popular vote if he tried, he was very big in Texas. So many people in Texas! Maybe sneak some money over to Nader, right? And the Dems knew that. They didn't say, let's change our Constitution and have the popular vote. They didn't seriously try to change it. There's a couple of ways to change it, you can do an amendment. Or hold a convention. We're doing the convention, as you know.

    You say the American people are LOSING. They tell me I'm doing a GREAT JOB. My approval ratings right now are magnificent. 50%. That's better than Obama had after his First Year. I think Parkland has a lot to do with it, I'm moving very strongly to PROTECT THE CHILDREN and people love that. They see that I always put America First. Always, always.

    My tweets, a lot of those are Dan Scavino numbers. And they've taken me very far. Obama, supposedly he has more followers. A lot of them are Fake, they're bots. But can you remember even one Obama tweet? They're very boring! Mine are so much fun. People remember mine. They talk about them. Our Fake News media love to talk about them, to write about them. People want to know, what's Donald J. Trump going to do next? I'm VERY UNPREDICTABLE, something our enemies need to keep in mind. But -- spoiler alert -- I'm going to be President for a few more seasons. More than a few. Somebody said I'm keeping Twitter in business single handedly. It's so true. I am Twitter. And you see people writing "Sad!" all the time now. That's from my tweets, it's caught on tremendously. I call it WINNING!