https://adage.com/article/digital/p-g-decided-facebook-ad-ta...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joannmuller/2012/05/15/gm-says-...
- not all people buying FB ads are experienced marketers
- companies throw tons of money at ineffective ads, that should be obvious…
- we have no idea what the ratio of "successful" to unsuccessful campaigns is
- even if that ratio is negative, Facebook is still one of the only remaining "games" in town, so people _will_ continue throwing money at it. “Least worst” is a fine and lucrative place to be in.
- can we just get over this idea of rational economies, by the way
- marketing is less of a science than a craft, and all the implications thereof
If you want to see how things work, start a small ad campaign yourself of FB. It's all about ROI, attribution, cost per action, super detailed targeting, etc. It's the opposite of "throwing money at it hoping that it'll work", unlike offline advertising or even traditional display ads.
"Sniper Targeting on Facebook: How to Target ONE specific person with super targeted ads" https://medium.com/@MichaelH_3009/sniper-targeting-on-facebo...
This is key and undermines a lot of rational arguments. People buying ads aren't reading HN and then making a buying decision based on the general vibe they get there. They'll buy based on budget. Budget is based on decisions made in a meeting a year or two before. Those decisions will be based on a strategy. For many that strategy is to the tune of 'I keep hearing about this social media thing that's supposed to be the future. I notice we aren't spending anything in digital. We need to buy more digital'.
If public opinion sours on Facebook it may be a while before we see a significant drop in revenues.
- marketing companies they ask to run Facebook campaigns for you may be as clueless as they are
Source: I used to work for one (we had separate development and social media marketing departments). People doing marketing had no clue about statistics, they just shoved random whale graphs from Facebook's fanpage panel into a word document and wrote narratives that suggested everything is peachy. Customers read those reports, and since they had no way or skill of reevaluating the results on their end, they were happy and willing to pay. I'm not even assuming malicious intent on the part of the provider - just general cluelessness.
I'm increasingly convinced a lot of marketing on the Internet looks that way. Neither party understands the real meaning of the results, but as long as the buyer is happy, money keeps flowing.