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I'm reminded of the whole Facebook "pivot to video" scandal, where they were telling media producers that people were watching video ads at massively inflated rates compared to reality, and there was no way to check Facebook's reported numbers, since they controlled the infrastructure. An entire industry moved from text to video based on lies. I'm sure some sales folks did well for themselves as hundreds of writers lost their jobs.

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If you advertise on facebook you don't care too much about reported numbers. It's add spend in, conversions out.

The facebook targeting back 2 years ago at least, amazing. There is a niche for hyperspecific advertising and facebook just crushed it (I'm not posting on facebook / no facebook app, so I think they suck for human health).

The parent is correct.

What a lot of HNers don't understand is that:

1) if you're a digital marketer with a budget, you have to spend the budget. Even if you know the metrics don't add up, you just keep spending until somebody finds a platform with a better ROI.

2) ad platforms don't like to talk about their secret sauce, because that would attract scrutiny.

IIRC CollegeHumor was nearly sunk by this debacle.

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