Facebook Essentially Has Been Telling Advertisers It Can Reach More People Than Actually Exist, Analyst Finds (marketwatch.com)

Facebook claims its ads have the potential to reach more people than recent U.S. census data shows exist, and that's troublesome for one analyst, who thinks third-party measurement services stand to benefit. From a report: Recently, Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser was intrigued by a trade publication study in Australia that said Facebook was claiming to reach 1.7 million more 16- to 39-year olds than actually existed in the country, according to Australian census data. In reproducing the study for the U.S., Wieser said Facebook's Ads Manager claims it can potentially reach 41 million 18- to 24-year-olds, 60 million 25- to 34-year-olds, and 61 million 35- to 49-year-olds. The problem arises when Wieser pulls up U.S. Census data from a year ago, showing 31 million 18- to 24-year-olds, 45 million 25- to 34-year-olds, and 61 million 35- to 49-year-olds. The upshot: Where is Facebook getting the extra 25 million 18- to 34-year-olds that the U.S. census did not count? "Conversations with agency executives on this topic indicate to us that the gap between Facebook and census figures is not widely known," Wieser said. "While Facebook's measurement issues won't necessarily deter advertisers from spending money with Facebook, they will help traditional TV sellers justify existing budget shares and could restrain Facebook's growth in video ad sales on the margins."

Comments

Kids in that range have multiple accounts

[WillAffleckUW]

Look, everyone has:

school FB that your parents can see
gaming FB that you use a gmail account for
sports or arts or news FB that you surf stupid cat vids on

in each group you connect to different people. You never post stuff to the first one that is really you.
in the second one you only post cosplay or fake pics so nobody can figure it's you.
in the third one you post a pic of a fuzzy animal or a truck or some animorph.

Are you guys so new to the Net that you don't know this?

Re:Not people... accounts

[war4peace]

As others have said, many people lie about their ages - at first FB would not allow minors to have accounts, so they would simply say they were at least 18. So that age range of demographics has to be quite skewed as well, especially the 18-25 range.

It still doesn't.
Last year I created a Facebook account for my son, because he would get X free whatever-crap-in-game-currency-name-there-is for the farmville-like and dragon-something games he's playing if he connects those games to Facebook. I couldn't add his true birth year, so I told Facebook he was 16 (apparently if you're under 16 you can't make an account, whatever). now this must be the case for a huge number of teens and children under 16: some game or app offers you free Crystals or whatever if you connect your Facebook account, so there ya go. Then parents forget their passwords, new accounts get created, etc. Fake accounts galore.