[russiasux]

This is hard core wrong. Only the preferred buyers have access to the product that everyone wants to buy. They negotiate above and beyond the auction system and the platform obfuscates that by making it more difficult for the users who are not preferred and must participate and in the "free market" to tell why their ads perform poorly.

Spoiler alert: it's because they are being sold garbage impressions while being shown "analytics" that make the lay person believe it's their content, or ad, or targeting, or whatever... and not the fact that the platform just pooled all the valuable impressions outside the auction and gave them to a preferred customer who never touched the auction system to begin with.

[xapata]

If that's true, that demonstrates the sellers aren't exercising monopoly power to set prices artificially high. A preferred buyer means someone able to negotiate.

[looping__lui]

Wow, that I did not know - but totally believe