As that article states it was potentially a useful source for age and gender demographic data. Google Analytics has this as well but I’d assume more people have given more precise data about their age and gender to Facebook than they have to Google.
Does the data precision on an individual level matter? As long as it's slightly better than random and the confusion matrix is known, then accurate aggregate statistics can be generated for any site that has more than a handful of users.
Not an expert on the topic, but Facebook allows for very localized/granular targeting. I'm sure that somebody could identity individuals with the data they expose.
I would have thought the opposite - that more people would have given accurate info about age and gender to Google than Facebook. After all, your search results on Google, YouTube etc, your premium subscriptions to YouTube or Google drive etc all provide accurate info to Google.
Btw by saying this, I don’t mean to say I trust Google more than FB. I trust neither and prefer DuckDuckGo.
I keep wondering whether such tools should be even legal. Where is the line between making sure you show your advert to people most likely interested in your product and straight up manipulating people into buying something they don't need?
In the past, if you sold let's say car parts, you would then naturally buy advert on a car forum, hoping that people interested in cars would click your ad and see what you have to offer.
Now you that such forums are mostly gone, you have the whole science of nudging people into buying something using your personal data harvested in questionable ways, various funnel strategies and so on. Why is this socially acceptable?
While I'm a vocal critic of both Facebook and Google, do they really make people buy things they don't need by manipulating?
Anecdotally, most of the marketing material and discounts that people around me get and then use to make a purchasing decision came from email. Not Google or Facebook shoving shit in their face, plain old email. Are you going to call for a ban on email?
The times I've been convinced to check out a product were only because either a.) their product was really good in the ad and b.) the ad was really good. For example, I still show that Honda R button ad to people who haven't seen it. And even though that ad was still brilliant, as I type this, my Google query (to reconfirm) was "Hyundai R button ad". That's right - that unique and famous YouTube ad that I still remember from 2015 was still not enough for me to even remember the name of the company, much less the name of the product!
Most ads are obnoxious and/or boring, and simply exasperating when they interrupt you in between, but nowhere near manipulative. Facebook and Google's major flaw is not in the advertising model but in the way they amplify voices of like minded people who are otherwise irrelevant personae.
I always took it as name recognition/playing the long game.
I'm not currently looking to buy a car. When I do there will be 10ish years of product placement in movies, banners, radio and TV commercials, magazine ads, youtube ads, good press, and bad press that I've been 'ignoring' that will undoubtedly play somehow into the purchasing decision.
This is a completely different beast. I am subscribed to a couple of companies that from time to time send me email about promotions they have and sometimes I buy those products.
> manipulating people into buying something they don't need?
This shows you have very little idea how advertising business works. There’s a lot of bad and shady stuff, sure, but that’s extremely naive oversimplification. It’s like saying that software engineering exists to steal jobs from people and give them to machines instead.
I think you started a mini flame war by over-reacting to that phrase. The original commenter acknowledged from the get-go that there is a difference between advertising that benefits people and that which doesn't. But you've selectively quoted them and repeatedly insisted that not all advertising is bad, even though they never claimed it is. You made things worse by repeatedly calling people ignorant, which just doesn't help to cultivate constructive discussion.
- You go to a shop and ask for information about what kind of tires they have
- A spotter sees you and phones the ad company that you were seen at such and such store asking for tires
- The ad company already knows where you do usually walk and what time
- They send agents with tires on billboards who follow you on the way to work and back and whenever you look they try to shove a banner in front of your eyes, sometimes even slowing you down as you try to walk past them
I am pretty sure if they did exactly the same as they do online, but offline, that would be illegal (stalking for starters)
The vast majority of advertising is not a socially productive activity.
There is a narrow use case that can be productive when informing a buyer of the existence of something they actually need, but this is not the case 90+% of the time.
We used it a lot some years ago when we built a chatbot for FB Messenger. It was a great surprise. FB analytics was very hidden, but once you got there their product was quite good. Simple to use and gave us 95% of everything we needed to know.
The problem was that you obviously needed to use it with Facebook. As we started building a FB chatbot, that was not an issue, but for any other product it didn't make sense.
We considered:
- Mixpanel was way too expensive for us.
- Google analytics is definitely not a product analytics tool.
- Game Analytics was a good tool, but too much focused on games.
Analytics tools can be very expensive and there weren't many good free alternatives that we were aware of.
I don’t know if this is related to their app SDK, but many apps use that (including e.g. Google’s own Waze) and that SDK collects analytics in its common Config (and lets you register your own events IIRC).
The last paragraph in outline.com privacy policy is basically them laughing at you for spending time reading the whole thing.
> Although most changes are likely to be minor, Outline may change its Privacy Policy from time to time, and in Outline’s sole discretion. Outline encourages visitors to check this page for changes to its Privacy Policy. Your continued use of this site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.
So I just checked this from my PC and indeed uBlock Origin had blocked 3 google-analytics.com links. TIL I suppose.
Unfortunately I cannot edit the OP anymore so I'll provide the original text in this comment
Facebook Analytics is Going Away
Facebook Analytics will no longer be available after June 30, 2021. Until then, you will still be able to access reports, export charts and tables, and explore insights. To export data into a CSV file from Facebook Analytics on your desktop, click the arrow in the top-right corner of each chart or table.
Other business tools can help you understand your advertising, presences, and activities on Facebook and Instagram, including:
-Facebook Business Suite allows you to manage your Facebook and Instagram business accounts and can show you detailed insights about your audience, content and trends. (This tool may not be available to you yet.)
-Events Manager can help you set up and manage Facebook Business Tools like the Facebook pixel and Conversions API, and reports actions taken on your website, in your app and in your physical store.
Readit News
The above seems to go into guesses as to why it's going away. A lot more informative than the original link.
Btw by saying this, I don’t mean to say I trust Google more than FB. I trust neither and prefer DuckDuckGo.
In the past, if you sold let's say car parts, you would then naturally buy advert on a car forum, hoping that people interested in cars would click your ad and see what you have to offer.
Now you that such forums are mostly gone, you have the whole science of nudging people into buying something using your personal data harvested in questionable ways, various funnel strategies and so on. Why is this socially acceptable?
Anecdotally, most of the marketing material and discounts that people around me get and then use to make a purchasing decision came from email. Not Google or Facebook shoving shit in their face, plain old email. Are you going to call for a ban on email?
The times I've been convinced to check out a product were only because either a.) their product was really good in the ad and b.) the ad was really good. For example, I still show that Honda R button ad to people who haven't seen it. And even though that ad was still brilliant, as I type this, my Google query (to reconfirm) was "Hyundai R button ad". That's right - that unique and famous YouTube ad that I still remember from 2015 was still not enough for me to even remember the name of the company, much less the name of the product!
Most ads are obnoxious and/or boring, and simply exasperating when they interrupt you in between, but nowhere near manipulative. Facebook and Google's major flaw is not in the advertising model but in the way they amplify voices of like minded people who are otherwise irrelevant personae.
I'm not currently looking to buy a car. When I do there will be 10ish years of product placement in movies, banners, radio and TV commercials, magazine ads, youtube ads, good press, and bad press that I've been 'ignoring' that will undoubtedly play somehow into the purchasing decision.
Because most people don't know that it's happening, and of the people that do, most don't care.
This shows you have very little idea how advertising business works. There’s a lot of bad and shady stuff, sure, but that’s extremely naive oversimplification. It’s like saying that software engineering exists to steal jobs from people and give them to machines instead.
There are narrow cases where advertising can be societally beneficial, but this is not the case the vast majority of the time.
Aren't they "manipulating people into buying something they don't need"?
- You go to a shop and ask for information about what kind of tires they have
- A spotter sees you and phones the ad company that you were seen at such and such store asking for tires
- The ad company already knows where you do usually walk and what time
- They send agents with tires on billboards who follow you on the way to work and back and whenever you look they try to shove a banner in front of your eyes, sometimes even slowing you down as you try to walk past them
I am pretty sure if they did exactly the same as they do online, but offline, that would be illegal (stalking for starters)
There is a narrow use case that can be productive when informing a buyer of the existence of something they actually need, but this is not the case 90+% of the time.
Anyone comment on whether this is widely used?
The problem was that you obviously needed to use it with Facebook. As we started building a FB chatbot, that was not an issue, but for any other product it didn't make sense.
We considered:
- Mixpanel was way too expensive for us.
- Google analytics is definitely not a product analytics tool.
- Game Analytics was a good tool, but too much focused on games.
Analytics tools can be very expensive and there weren't many good free alternatives that we were aware of.
Can you elaborate on this please? I'm really not used to analytics tools, but GA does look like one to me.
https://outline.com/Mvrn9u
> Although most changes are likely to be minor, Outline may change its Privacy Policy from time to time, and in Outline’s sole discretion. Outline encourages visitors to check this page for changes to its Privacy Policy. Your continued use of this site after any change in this Privacy Policy will constitute your acceptance of such change.
Unfortunately I cannot edit the OP anymore so I'll provide the original text in this comment
Facebook Analytics is Going Away
Facebook Analytics will no longer be available after June 30, 2021. Until then, you will still be able to access reports, export charts and tables, and explore insights. To export data into a CSV file from Facebook Analytics on your desktop, click the arrow in the top-right corner of each chart or table.
Other business tools can help you understand your advertising, presences, and activities on Facebook and Instagram, including:
-Facebook Business Suite allows you to manage your Facebook and Instagram business accounts and can show you detailed insights about your audience, content and trends. (This tool may not be available to you yet.)
-Events Manager can help you set up and manage Facebook Business Tools like the Facebook pixel and Conversions API, and reports actions taken on your website, in your app and in your physical store.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210406073805/https://www.faceb...
heh, except for analytics.archive.org
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