No kidding !? The number one social network would have false positives among its advertising results? This is reported by the University of North Carolina in a report published at the end of March. We learn that targeting audiences based on areas of interest is not as precise as we would like it to be.
On paper, Facebook’s algorithm channels information from our profile and our navigation to offer appropriate content and targeted ads. But, in fact, the accuracy rate seems to be around 70%. Analysts who have studied the subject estimate that there is a margin of error of 30%; leading to inaccurate ad performance, irrelevant results and, for advertisers, unnecessary expense.
To carry out these analyses, the academics created new accounts and, by planning actions on these profiles, we find that 33.22% of the content offered did not correspond to the centers of interest entered. These results were then cross-referenced with those of 146 real Internet users scattered around the world, to arrive at an inaccuracy rate of 29%.
Obviously, the study can also be inaccurate with so few participants facing the 2.9 billion users that Facebook account. But, the process remains valid since, even by carefully following a profile, the slightest change, click, or word can lead to the distribution of an irrelevant advertisement. We also note that Facebook does not always differentiate between certain positive interactions and other negative ones.
iOS, partly responsible?
Since the introduction of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency, many Internet users have deactivated the tracking of their activity on Facebook. The social network therefore does not have complete data and this may explain the erroneous results on the targeting side. However, Facebook’s data collection system remains the most efficient and its search engine is one of the most advanced.
Errors can be reduced by leveraging the use of Lookalike Audiences to improve the accuracy of your ad campaigns. On the other hand, it is difficult to achieve perfection and you have to be aware of it. Meta is striving to progress and this gap could be corrected over time, but everything is not based solely on the Facebook platform and targeting an audience starts from the design of a visual, a text… in short, ‘A content.