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Facebook Flat-Out 'Lies' About How Many People Can See Its Ads, Lawsuit Alleges (theregister.co.uk)
A new lawsuit claims that Facebook exaggerates how many people can see its ads, thereby defrauding advertisers. "In other words, it is alleged not quite as many eyeballs are seeing Facebook's ads as its salespeople charge for," writes Thomas Claburn via The Register. From the report: In a complaint filed on Wednesday in a US district court in Oakland, California, plaintiffs Danielle Singer and her company Project Therapy, LLC claim the Potential Reach and Estimated Daily Reach figures that Facebook provides to advertisers are wildly inflated. As an example, the complaint claims that Facebook's purported Potential Reach among 18-to-34-year-olds in each U.S. state is greater the actual population of 18-to-34-year-olds in each of those states.
"Based on a combination of publicly available research and Plaintiffs' own analysis, among 18-34 years-olds in Chicago, for example, Facebook asserted its Potential Reach was approximately 4 times (400 per cent) higher than the number of real 18-34 year-olds with Facebook accounts in Chicago," the complaint states. And in Kansas City, the complaint asserts, the number provided by Facebook was 200 per cent higher than the actual number of 18-to-54-year-olds with Facebook accounts in the area. What's more, the court filing contends that former Facebook employees, described as confidential witnesses, have acknowledged that Facebook is fine with inflated numbers. The attorneys representing Singer and her biz, which supposedly spent over $14,000 on Facebook ads, are seeking class-action certification in order to represent other affected Facebook advertisers. According to the complaint, "a former Facebook employee who worked in the infrastructure/mapping team stated that those who were responsible for ensuring the accuracy of the Potential Reach at Facebook were indifferent to the actual numbers and in fact 'did not give a sh--.'" They also said the "Potential Reach" statistic is "like a made-up PR number."
"Based on a combination of publicly available research and Plaintiffs' own analysis, among 18-34 years-olds in Chicago, for example, Facebook asserted its Potential Reach was approximately 4 times (400 per cent) higher than the number of real 18-34 year-olds with Facebook accounts in Chicago," the complaint states. And in Kansas City, the complaint asserts, the number provided by Facebook was 200 per cent higher than the actual number of 18-to-54-year-olds with Facebook accounts in the area. What's more, the court filing contends that former Facebook employees, described as confidential witnesses, have acknowledged that Facebook is fine with inflated numbers. The attorneys representing Singer and her biz, which supposedly spent over $14,000 on Facebook ads, are seeking class-action certification in order to represent other affected Facebook advertisers. According to the complaint, "a former Facebook employee who worked in the infrastructure/mapping team stated that those who were responsible for ensuring the accuracy of the Potential Reach at Facebook were indifferent to the actual numbers and in fact 'did not give a sh--.'" They also said the "Potential Reach" statistic is "like a made-up PR number."
This can't possibly be true! A major corporation would never ever lie about a completely unverifiable "fact" just to make money!
Smart crooks at least make sure the numbers are somewhat plausible. They probably started small and found that nobody actually noticed. Then they just kept inflating the numbers, completely unaware that there is a hard upper bound. It really does not get much more stupid than this.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I remember when the web was first starting up, people were wondering which model it would follow: newspapers, television, radio, or libraries.
I suggested the library model since in my view, there was no money to be made off of the net in the way that would support a whole industry.
It seemed at first that I was wrong, and then these studies came out:
These tell us that 8% of the users account for 85% of the ad clicks, and these users tend to be from households with yearly income under $40,000.
In other words, advertising on the internet does not reach the audience it wants, but instead is mostly taken up by the people who spend a lot of time on the internet because they have no other form of recreation.
This has been exacerbated by the bots which take up 28% of internet traffic, the use of ad blockers, and the tendency of experienced people whose time is valuable to avoid the internet since its audience now seems like daytime TV watchers after the mobile era began in 2007.
Since those studies have come out, we have seen the big companies trying to jockey "we have a lot of warm bodies" into "our advertising is valuable," when all credible data suggests the opposite.
In other words, assume the crash position.
Alternative Right.