
How Facebook Sold Krill Oil - Libertatea
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/03/technology/how-facebook-sold-you-krill-oil.html
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tomp
The money line is this:

> Indeed, R.B.’s lawyers won’t let its marketers claim that MegaRed [krill
> oil] pills actually lead to a healthier heart. They can only suggest it with
> scientific-sounding language like “supports three markers of heart health”:
> triglycerides, C-reactive proteins and the omega-3 index.

It's rare to see such a straightforward and clear admission of how much
bullshit there is in advertising. Using weasel words that don't actually mean
anything (so that the customer can't say that your product didn't deliver),
and selling stuff that people don't _really need_ but which they buy because
they make them feel good. Of course, this is more obvious in OTC health
products, but actually present in most categories of ads. I think that the
omnipresent advertising we're facing in the modern world is nothing more but
pollution of the mind, implanting thoughts that aren't really our own but that
only serve a for-profit purpose of a multinational corporation.

~~~
cbr
You're interpreting "their lawyers won't allow them to say X" to mean "they
don't actually believe X", "they can't substantiate X", or "X isn't true".
Except with medical advertising, at least in the US, there's very strong
restrictions on what medical claims you're allowed to make for your product.

~~~
beejiu
And the reason for those restrictions is to protect consumers. If there was
evidence that fish oil pills improved health, RB would have paid for the
medical research already.

~~~
cbr
There's some evidence, enough that some doctors will recommend you take them,
but there's not strong enough evidence that the FDA will let you make the
marketing claim.

~~~
beejiu
There is absolutely NO conclusive evidence. Your doctor is not a scientist
([http://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/328/7454/0.9.full.pdf](http://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/328/7454/0.9.full.pdf)).
It's not up to doctors to decide what works and what doesn't. The fact that
doctors prescribe Omega 3 pills means absolutely nothing. The fact that there
is no scientific evidence to say the pills are conclusively beneficial DOES
mean something. The only evidence of effect has been based on studies of large
groups of people who claimed to consume Omega 3 or not. However, proper blind
experiments do not reach any conclusive outcome. There is no evidence to
suggest the effect is anything but correlatory. (That said, most supplementary
pills will do you no harm, either.)

Even RB themselves write this on the homepage: "Supportive, but not conclusive
research shows that consumption of EPA and DHA Omega-3 fatty acids may reduce
the risk of coronary heart disease."

~~~
cbr
I didn't say there was conclusive evidence, and I agree that correlational
evidence is low quality. A large randomized study on Omega 3 consumption would
really help here, but in the mean time we have to use the evidence that's
available.

(Though [http://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/omega-3-fatty-
ac...](http://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/omega-3-fatty-acids-fish-
oil-alpha-linolenic-acid/evidence/hrb-20059372) judges the evidence behind the
pills as "strong scientific evidence for this use" in several categories.)

------
yeldarb
"The Facebook folks countered that such specific targeting would be very
expensive. Under Facebook’s auction system, advertisers compete for limited
slots in the users’ news feeds; the more targeted the pitch, the higher the
cost for reaching each 1,000 people. With only a small pool of targets, R.B.
would be competing with other brands that wanted to reach those same people,
forcing it to pay more to be the advertiser that won the slot."

If you go for the more general targeting doesn't that mean your ads are just
going to be scraping the bottom of the barrel, served to people nobody else
wants to target?

I understand how this is in Facebook's best interest but fail to see how it
benefits the client.

If you know your customers are those who care about heart health it seems like
targeting others and having to convince them first to care about their heart
and then to buy your product seems like a huge barrier.

------
butner
Is +2pts of people who say they're more likely to buy worth 4x the budget?
Hard to say... "During the eight-week campaign, 18.1 million women aged 45 and
up saw at least one ad, according to Nielsen’s research. That was 56 percent
of the target audience. The number who said they were now more likely to buy
MegaRed rose by two percentage points."

Seems like the classic media sales approach is alive and well, and that it's
boosting Facebook's revenues. The issue is that the way that Facebook shares
data (or rather doesn't) makes meaningful analysis possible. "the [Facebook]
ad strategists were saying they wanted him to spend money to show ads to every
American woman 45 and older on Facebook — as many as 32 million people."

no kidding...

~~~
Bahamut
If you read the article carefully, you would have saw that revenues were twice
as efficient as traditional ads during the campaign. That's a big win.

Whether you can extrapolate those results to even more improvement by spending
more on FB is debateable though.

~~~
butner
It says twice as much as they spent on the ads. That's a measure relative to
the ad spend, not a performance measure compared to their other channels or
campaigns. Big difference.

"the campaign generated about twice as much revenue as R.B. spent on the ads"

Which is put into light by the channel cost comparison from the article: “I
can go to television at a quarter the price.”

~~~
cldellow
Is the channel cost comparison relevant given that we don't have the ROI of TV
spend?

~~~
butner
ROI for other channels vs FB would indeed be the missing variables that would
give context to the article. Cost of channel (TV in this case) is part of ROI,
and it's the only other hint provided.

