[zwaps]

Even three years ago, I have seen academic work (presentations) on Facebooks effectiveness of advertising - based on facebooks own data - and the conclusion was pretty dire.

The only reason (yes I asked) Facebook continued to allow these studies was because Google did even worse.

I wonder if all this stuff ever got published.

Never heard anything in the press, so I am guessing Facebook eventually pulled the plug. I wonder if I saved the drafts tho :>

[staplung]

Probably not exactly the presentation you mention but Freakonomics explored the issue of advertising effectiveness in a 2 part series. Part 2 is about online ads. The picture it paints is pretty bad.

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/advertising-part-2/

One thing I was hoping they'd explore was whether any of the recent companies that participated in the fb ad boycott realized afterward that the advertising dollars were not really working for them.

[octostone]

Please share if you have!

[zwaps]

Here is one from originally 2016 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3033144

Apparently - I did a quick search - conversion rate at facebook is said to be on average up to 9% (in marketing materials) or around 4-5%.

In this study, the authors show conversion rate consistently sub 1%, which is however not the point of the article. Rather, they also show that the lift in conversion (so the actual impact of the ad) as calculated by observational measures usually over-estimates the actual lift (sometimes significantly). Observational measures were those used by advertisers on facebook - maybe even now?

The more snarky comments from the presentation are missing from the draft, of course.