It became known that Facebook managers consider targeted advertising for business useless: in the business correspondence of employees, data were given that paid ads are not shown to the target audience even in half of the cases.
The information became available to the public during a judicial investigation that was conducted against Facebook. The owner of a small business filed a lawsuit against the social network because the funds invested in advertising in FB did not bring customers. Its ads were targeted at wealthy and educated people, and as a result, in 40% of cases, ads were seen by people without education and with a low income. Besides, the ad was not seen by any user who met all the selected targeting criteria. The information became available to the public during a judicial investigation that was conducted against Facebook. The owner of a small business filed a lawsuit against the social network since the funds invested in advertising in FB did not bring customers. Its ads were targeted at wealthy and educated people, and as a result, in 40% of cases, ads were seen by people without education and with a low income. Also, the ad was not seen by any user who met all the selected targeting criteria.
Then, during the investigation, lawyers found correspondence between the Manager and the Technical Director of Facebook, which was conducted in 2016. It said that the accuracy of targeting in the United States is only 41%, and in other countries, this percentage is even lower. This suggests that the company knew about the low efficiency of paid ads, but still persistently offered advertising services to businessmen, misleading them.
Officially, Facebook responded to the statement by saying that the quotes were taken out of context and tried to extract the documents, citing privacy. However, the court rejected the petition and took into account the letters of employees of the Corporation. After the social network appeared a warning that the company does not guarantee 100% accuracy of targeted advertising.
Have you tried targeting ads in FB? Are you satisfied with the results?