
Trump’s Campaign Said It Was Better at Facebook, and Facebook Agrees - chatmasta
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-03/trump-s-campaign-said-it-was-better-at-facebook-facebook-agrees
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fortythirteen
> The paper, obtained by Bloomberg and discussed here for the first time,
> describes in granular detail the difference between Trump’s campaign, which
> was focused on finding new donors, and Clinton’s campaign, which
> concentrated on ensuring Clinton had broad appeal.

Here is the heart of the matter, sans the latest attempt at naming a scapegoat
for Clinton's loss.

A populist candidate focused on leveraging the people who were becoming
receptive to his message, while an establishment candidate focused on trying
to nudge over people who weren't inherently receptive to her message. That's
the whole campaign in a nutshell.

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nukeop
Yes, of course they were. They also made better use of Twitter, and took
advantage of the broken clickbait-based news market by generating cheap
controversies and using strong language to get free publicity. There's no meme
that spreads faster than anger, people love sharing things that make them
angry, and it was heavily exploited by this campaign. No matter what you think
about his policies, Trump is a master politician that knows how to play his
opponents and the media like a fiddle. It's low brow, and it's brutal, but it
works.

~~~
jakeogh
OR... it is possible that people researched the history and positions of the
Bush/Clinton dynasties?

~~~
beefield
Possible that people researched something instead of falling victim of
confirmation bias and internet memes? Unless you mean by researching something
very different than me, you even thinking that is possible makes me guess your
sample of "people" is heavily biased.

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jakeogh
I don't assume people are so easily fooled. Especially by those two families.
Take 5 minutes to research the latest creepy front runner (JB). There's not
even a chance, but the central news pretends. I think the data (a solid win by
an outsider) supports that.

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jakeogh
Why not post the paper?

~~~
anilshanbhag
I don't believe the numbers. Clinton outspent Trump 2 to 1. She had the most
sophisticated ops (including Groundwork (Eric Schmidt-backed startup)). How
could Clinton campaign have spent half the other when it was their area of
competence ?

~~~
Spooky23
She outspent Obama too early on.

Trump is a guy who does whatever he can to get attention. Given the pathetic
state of the GOP slate and the less than inspirational Hillary campaign...
people just needed a little push.

~~~
swebs
Clinton outspent Trump over the entire campaign. Clinton spent $1.18 billion,
where Trump spent $617 million.

[https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidentia...](https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidential-
campaign-fundraising/)

So Clinton outspent Trump by nearly double in the entire election, but
according to the article, it was the opposite when regarding Facebook
spending.

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alanlovestea
Clinton may spent most money on traditional media channels and wasted her
money as described in the article.

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downandout
tl;dr Trump's team tested roughly 90X the variations of ads that Clinton's
team did (5.9MM vs 66K), and aggressively utilized Facebook's powerful
lookalike audience tool, while Clinton used it for only 4% of her ads. Trump
ads also allowed Facebook's ad algorithm to optimize for actions, where
Clinton focused on simple exposure.

In other words, Trump's team let the Facebook ads system do its thing,
utilizing the same tools that other marketers on the platform use regularly.
Hillary's team used it more like a traditional media buy, leaving Facebook's
most powerful advertising features largely unused. To the extent that one
believes Facebook ads had any effect on the election, this seems to at least
partially answer the question of how things ended up where they did.

~~~
nopriorarrests
I don't understand why are you downvoted. 5.9M of different ads vs 66K ads,
that's ridiculous ratio.

It's more than tenfold difference, and it definitely influences the user
engagement down to final conversion, err, sorry, vote.

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return0
> An internal Facebook white paper

that sounds like an unbiased source

~~~
dictum
I don't think there are sources that are simultaneously privy to details of an
issue and unbiased.

(It's the same reason why regulatory capture and other crony clubs can happen
entirely organically.)

Edit: The closest thing you can get to an unbiased source is a party that
doesn't have a vested interest in the story. Given how Facebook sprawls a lot
of interests - business, media, government/politics, culture/sociology,
technology - there aren't many parties without bias.

~~~
return0
could easily be less biased if it was a joint publication from facebook +
whoever managed that campaign for trump and clinton. they both have access to
those details.

