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by forrestthewoods 3387 days ago
> Facebook has less users not more, while they always emphasize their user growth I come across more and more people in real life who simply don't have a Facebook-Account,

The data strongly disagrees with your anecdote. It wasn't but a few years ago they were targeting 1 billion users. Now they're at almost 2 billion.

http://1u88jj3r4db2x4txp44yqfj1.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-c...
1 comments
MegaButts 3387 days ago
How do they define active though? Does that just mean someone that logs in once during that month? Admittedly, that's still something, but it's not the kind of engagement that will excite advertisers.
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forrestthewoods 3387 days ago
$27,000,000,000 worldwide advertising revenue in 2016. Up 50% from 2015. I'd say advertisers are sufficiently excited.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/271258/facebooks-adverti...

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MegaButts 3387 days ago
So I've always wondered about this. How many of those companies are making a return on their advertising? Everybody knows that there are bots that click on ads, so for clicks I'd imagine the metrics are useless. So then the obvious follow-up is conversion - how many people click through and then buy something? I imagine for some companies this is a positive return and then obviously the money was well spent, but what about the many companies where that just doesn't directly translate? Advertising for cars is very different than advertising for toys. I imagine a lot of companies trying to generate brand awareness through advertising are wasting money. And it's obvious many sites are gaming the system with autoplay videos and a bunch of other obnoxious shit.

Obviously this works well for Facebook as they continue to generate revenue. I've just never understood the advertising world. Then again, I use adblock and when I used to watch broadcast TV I muted commercials, so I'm not the target demographic. I know in addition to ads they make money selling your information, such as Facebook's patent to determine your credit score based on your friends (doesn't that sound fun).

I realize this is a mature industry and I do not pretend that I have some brilliant insight nobody has thought of before. But I do question the assumptions on which modern advertising is based.

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forrestthewoods 3387 days ago
My industry is premium video games. But a lot of my industry friends are in the mobile f2p world. According to them not only is Facebook a clear return on investment it's by far the best. No other advertising platform comes close in efficiency.

Successful games can achieve a user lifetime value (LTV) in the range of $5 to $10. Which lets them turn on a firehouse of advertising money. If user acqusition costs $4/user but their LTV is $8 that's a good deal!

I'm somewhat with you. I also block all the ads. And I'm not a fan of the vast majority of f2p games. But the proof is in the pudding. It works and businesses are highly profitable off the back of Facebook advertising. <shrug>

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