[carlosjobim]

I'll make an attempt to explain it:

Advertising on TV cost tens of thousands of dollars and requires great effort, magazines and billboards a bit less on both fronts. But advertising on social media costs as little as you want, and these platforms are constantly asking business owners to throw in $20 or $50 to advertise. And when the business owner does so, Meta will give them completely fake statistics of how 40 000 people saw their ad. What does it matter that nobody clicked the ad and nobody purchased the product? Meta says right here that the ad was very effective. People love to gamble, and Facebook ads are nothing but a form of gambling for (usually small) business owners. "Sales have been slow this month, what if..." And since the barrier to spending on ads is so low, millions of people will take the bait. Add in the factor that advertisers can choose from hundreds of parameters to target the ads, and they feel like it's a skill they can train to win - hey it's just like sports betting!

Or somebody with a business or an executive has hired their niece to take care of "social media presence" for the company. Of course she is going to say that the ads she is buying on Meta are working great. Her job depends on it! Dito for outsourcing this to a third party that takes care of social media advertising. Of course they're going to give you phony presentations on how well their ads are working.

So it's not that the ads are working. It's a simple casino, and ad purchasers are the suckers.

Except for the 50%+ ads on Instagram which are outright scams and frauds. They probably bring in a lot of money to the advertisers.