from the all-the-ones-that-are-not-dead-yet? dept.
How many 18-34 year old people live in the US?
Facebook tells advertisers that they can reach up to 41 million users in the 18-24 age bracket. Sounds reasonable... However, one stock analyst (who unlike most analysts, has a "SELL" rating for Facebook shares) noticed that there are only 31 million people in the country in that age bracket (according to the Census Bureau.)
On the one hand, the Census Bureau has decades of experience coming up with scientifically accurate population estimates based on birth and death rates, immigration rates, representative surveys, and even literally going door to door and counting people.
On the other hand, Facebook data is both specific and granular. Users provide their birthdays, and Facebook captures where you log in from. So the company knows if you’re inside the boundaries of the U.S., and it knows how old you are.
Of course, in the advertising world, if a person doesn't exist how can you reach them?
Also reported by Reuters
Facebook Offering Access to more US Customers Than Actually Exist (Claims Analyst)
Spotted on The Register is an article on claims about the unreliability of Facebook's advertising statistics:
Facebook has an extensive and sophisticated ad-buying system that assures potential advertisers it can reach no fewer than 41 million of a core target group of 18 to 24-year-olds in the United States.
The only problem, analyst Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research Group pointed out in a note to customers, is that there are only 31 million of them that actually exist in the US, according to the official census data. The same gap in reality also holds for other groups, including the next most-targeted group of 25 to 34-year-olds.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @10:08AM (1 child)
Need more "eyes" in your targeted demographic to sell more ads?
No problem, just make them up.
Duplicate accounts, inactive accounts, data-generated "ghost" accounts, and troll/sock puppet accounts all have "eyes" in the Zuckerverse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 10 2017, @05:13AM
There's duplication in your comment: "sock puppet" is just another name for a duplicate account.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @11:00AM (2 children)
Or any site that wants personal information? My profile there at least has the correct age. Born on 1April, though. Educated in the Dagobah system.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @11:45AM (1 child)
Simple. The extra 10 million users are all Russians with fake US ids.
(Score: 3, Funny) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday September 09 2017, @12:10PM
You're saying Russia, Russia, Russia, but I don’t. Maybe it was. It could be Russia, but it could also be China. It could also be lots of other people. It also could be someone sitting on their bed that weighs 800 pounds. If you deduct the millions of #FacebookFakes there would be nothing left. There is no Facebook. Their leader is corrupt. Lying about a key demographic. #FuckZuck2020 pic.twitter.com/6D1O3FALbX 🇺🇸
(Score: 5, Insightful) by zocalo on Saturday September 09 2017, @11:06AM (3 children)
which is almost certainly more accurate when it's written like this:
because no one under legal age *ever* lies about their age to gain access to any age-restricted material, right? Factor in people with multiple accounts that Facebook turns a blind eye to because it looks better in their marketing demographic stats, and yeah, I can well believe a ~33% inflation in figures.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Saturday September 09 2017, @11:25AM
Yeah, FB doesn't sound noteworthy or exceptional on this matter. In the youth worship culture that is the US, where age discrimination towards IT professionals over 40 is supposedly rampant, many cover up their age for that reason. Resume advisors recommend doing so. Just delete all those 20th century dates. Graduated from college in 1995? You're over the hill.
What about dating sites? Many understate their age there.
And how many people use hair coloring to cover up gray hair, or comb overs or toupees to cover baldness, botox to erase wrinkles, face cream for those crows eyes? Seem no lack of such products on store shelves.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday September 09 2017, @06:46PM (1 child)
How does the company know you are the boundaries of the U.S again? VPN services exist, and geolocation isn't perfect. It's how old people claim they are, and where Facebook *supposes* they are. None of it is remotely as credible as Census data. At least that's a physical person showing up.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday September 10 2017, @08:13AM
Of course the question is which is more interesting to the advertisers: Your true age (which basically says how much time passed since your birth), or your felt age (which determines your consumption habits)?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @11:09AM (5 children)
The PTB rely on HUMAN FLESH in the FOOD SUPPLY to maintain their human appearance
Human flesh exists in a lot of foods today. Sometimes it makes the news. These are PTB slip ups, and/or conditioning this reality.
They rely on the consumption of human flesh to retain their human appearance. They all have the same scent. They exist from the bottom to the top of the pyramid. Some are bums, some are middle/upper class, some are those dancing for you on TV, in a web of deceit to keep your mind and body occupied.
If you want to try and let one of them know that you know what they are, you might say to them:
"This hamburger is really quite human"
(inhale deeply) "This planet is filled with creatures which all smell the same"
"I hope you enjoyed your flesh burger"
"How long did your last regeneration period last?"
"What office do you work for?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @11:23AM (3 children)
What's PTB?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday September 09 2017, @11:38AM (2 children)
Urban dictionary points the PTB to TV show Angel's "The Powers That Be" meme.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday September 09 2017, @11:47AM (1 child)
Same as pulmonary tuberculosis then?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday September 09 2017, @04:26PM
Oh, who knows what AC meant, but "powers that be" seems to fit the context.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Sunday September 10 2017, @08:32PM
Oh please, not more anti-Thubani disinformation. Yes, it's true they have very advanced medical and biological knowledge, and it's part of their standard procedure when guiding life forms that haven't evolved culturally and technologically to political organization on the scale of a star system to use their technology to assume the appearance of the natives.
Just ask yourself this, though. Why would a people advanced enough to be operating 300 light years away from the system they evolved in rely on something that doesn't even make sense like reprocessing deceased members of the host civilization into its own food supply?! How would that even help them? Their human skins rely on the same nutrients that may be found in plant and animal sources just like us humans do. Given their perspective on humanity, being millions of years more evolved than humans, many of them even have reservations about eating cows, pigs, and many other large mammals, preferring a vegetarian diet with fish, plenty of insects, and phosphorus supplements. (The Earth's biosphere is phosphorus-poor compared to their native environment on the now barren Thuban d.)
They don't view the old wonderful sausage creepy trope that much differently from humans. Of course, Thubani culture has its own wonderful sausage trope, which I might be able to loosely translate as “wonderful grasshopper-loaf.” Same idea. An insect baker loses his temper with his mate one night and chops them up. Unsure what to do with the body and afraid of being found out, the baker grinds up the body and uses it in his grasshopper-loaf. He soon gains fame thanks to his “wonderful grasshopper-loaf.” Depending on how the person telling the story is feeling, sometimes the baker gets caught, and sometimes they don't.
As for the regeneration thing, regeneration of the human skin is generally only necessary once in the recipient's lifetime, though I'm not going to pretend that some don't undergo it once every few Earth years. (Yeah, I know, travel light years from the nearest inhabited system just to aspire to something as banal as a movie star, though I don't mind Keanu Reeves' work.) The average Thubani life span is 140 Earth years, and they typically get it done around age 70 or 80 around the time their human skin begins to show problems due to old age. The procedure takes a little over a month.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday September 09 2017, @11:29AM
Estimate [wikipedia.org] the number of sufferers of Facebook schizophrenia.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by DonkeyChan on Saturday September 09 2017, @11:41AM (4 children)
41 million users in the 18-24 age bracket
or
41 million users in the 18-24 age bracket in the U.S.
They're a world wide company and I don't see anything they said that indicates their numbers are for the U.S exclusively.
They also own Instagram and depending on what they consider "reach" could be including that.
C.O.I.
I despise what FB is.
(Score: 2) by Scrutinizer on Saturday September 09 2017, @12:55PM (3 children)
Facebook told advertisers that the platform can potentially “reach” 41 million young adults between 18 and 24 in the US. [gizmodo.com]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday September 09 2017, @02:01PM (1 child)
Ah, there you have it! You didn't scrutinized that word.
FB wasn't lying, it's not FB's fault this potential is not realized.
If there would be 41 millions young adults between 18 and 24 in the US, then FB could reach them.
It's like saying: "Facebook told advertisers that the platform can "reach" up to 2B young adults between 18 and 24 in the US."
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 09 2017, @03:44PM
Wrong. If there are less than 41 million people in the target demographic during the time period in question (as such SEC reports are always made in regard to a specific time period), then there can be no potential to accomplish an impossible task, that being sending advertisements to more eyeballs than which physically exist.
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Saturday September 09 2017, @03:57PM
Really depends on your definition of "in"
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Saturday September 09 2017, @01:49PM
Since I'm one of those people that doesn't understand the greatness that is Facebook I might be wrong here but hasn't FB had an age requirement so kids don't register? Which probably leads to kids that want an FB account up their age a few years? The upper limit isn't high enough that people probably lie about the age in the other direction.
Secondly does FB ever prune their database? As in remove people that have died, or just people that never login anymore. Once registered you are a datapoint FOREVER?
Even if it was in the 31-41 million range of 18-34 year old in the USA, they don't have to be US citizens after all; there could be Canadians, Mexicans or just tourists of some kind -- or illegals; they might enjoy their Facebook time to as they try and dodge the ICE deathsquads, or whatever the current cool terminology is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 10 2017, @12:02AM (2 children)
Headline says 18-34, but body says 18-24.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 10 2017, @12:48AM (1 child)
Read the body again, or even just the summary...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 10 2017, @05:15AM
Thanks, I see it now.
(Score: 3, Funny) by krishnoid on Sunday September 10 2017, @01:08AM
They have a strategic reserve of potential Facebook users in that demographic that they've been breeding in secret. They intend to slowly release them into the general population to keep their subscription numbers up when they have a bad quarter, or release them into Zuckerberg's game preserve once they start aging out. Come on people, wise up!