The inscrutable eyeball machine

This piece contains an interesting insight into the business of advertising on Facebook. Here are the startling bits:

Facebook faces a business problem; it’s [sic] unaudited “internal company data” has been, at times, grossly inaccurate; that is, it may be selling eyeballs, but in 2016 buyers don’t really know which eyeballs, how many, and where...

...Facebook has formed alliances with other third-party verification firms, including the Media Rating Council...

Which sounds fair enough, except, being the 800-pound gorilla in the room, Facebook gets to choose what those pesky auditors are allowed to see:

...Facebook chooses what data to submit. I’ll note that if we were back in the print world, this would like locking the auditor into a room, and handing him a report of how many papers were delivered, instead of letting him look at the trucks or the loading dock. In other words, it’s the metric that’s certified, but not the data driving the metric, or the algorithm creating that data.

To most people, this wouldn't seem like the right way to do auditing, but I guess that when you're the 800-pound gorilla in a relationship "right" = whatever suits you:

Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

Interesting stuff, although I don't think this power relationship shows that Facebook faces a business problem.

It looks to me as though business faces a Facebook problem, at least until it finds a way to look inside the black box of Facebook's eyeball machine.



 Image credit Wellcome Library, London

Epic public health FAIL

Re-posted here because this reminds me of something I read in The Guardian a few days ago:

The Department of Health is putting the fast food companies McDonald's and KFC and processed food and drink manufacturers such as PepsiCo, Kellogg's, Unilever, Mars and Diageo at the heart of writing government policy on obesity, alcohol and diet-related disease, the Guardian has learned.

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Image courtesy of FAIL Blog

Catch it, bin it, kill it

In my last blog post, I made a facetious reference to having "dragged myself in to work, probably infecting others in the process". In my new role as a respectable small businessman*, guess I'd better point out that that wasn't a serious remark (if I didn't hate emoticons, I might have put a smiley in there). To the best of my knowledge no clients or colleagues were harmed during my sniffy episode, as I took the precaution of carrying and using generous supplies of tissues and antiseptic hand gel to prevent any transmission of disease.

In fact, I've only seriously wanted to spread a virus once in my life. A while back, when I had a short time doing a horrible little office job (the sort that would qualify for a slot in The Idler's "Crap Jobs" slot), I had a similar dose of lurgie. I really felt awful, but dragged myself into work, despite that poky little office being the last place on earth I wanted to be and just got on with what I was supposed to be doing, without complaint. I shared the office with two people, one of whom was an ill-natured toad-like individual who had taken an unprovoked dislike to me from the moment I'd arrived and who seemed to be on a mission to make my working life as miserable as possible, with constant carping, rudeness, theatrical sighing and eye-rolling and heavy-handed attempts to be patronising (this person, like most such colleagues from hell was, of course, bosom buddies with the boss).

On that day, only the toad and myself were in. After having made a supreme effort to get in and do my work to the best of my ability, despite feeling absolutely dreadful, I was greeted by a glowering look of spiteful malevolence from the toad. After a long period of silence, punctuated by ostentatious sighing, tutting and dirty looks, the toad announced in an exasperated voice that this was a small office and that I should be considerate enough go to the GP and demand antibiotics immediately in order not to risk infecting my colleagues (not a note of concern for me or my family, who'd all been laid low by a very unpleasant bug). I was too cross to trust myself to say anything, although in my head, I gave sarcastic thanks for the toad's concern and pointed out the stupidity of demanding antibiotics to treat a virus. At that moment I sincerely hoped that I was infectious and that the toad would catch the same miserable virus. Sad to say, the toad remained in rude health.

* Hi, I'm Sneezy, pleased to meet you Doc, Grumpy, Happy, Sleepy, Bashful and Dopey.