FACEBOOK FINDS MORE IMAGINARY HUMANS

You may remember last year when Facebook was widely ridiculed for claiming that it reached more people than exist. Well, not being satisfied with that, this year the gap between Facebook's claimed reach and the number of living, breathing humans has grown. No you can't make this shit up.

Last year, in Australia, Facebook claimed it could reach 1.7 million more 15 to 39-year-olds than the official population of the country. This year, according to AdNews, Facebook's reach has grown. They can now reach 1.85 million more 15 to 39's than there are.

You gotta give them credit. They're doing an amazing job of improving their ability to reach imaginary people.

The really hilarious part is how Facebook justifies this nonsense by torturing the definition of what "reach" means, “Our reach estimator tool and census data are very different data sets, with different calculation methods, designed to show different results” Oh, now I see -- different data sets. Yeah, yeah...

Imagine the arrogance that believes anyone will accept this bullshit as an explanation.

By the way, Facebook is being sued for their lying and their "different data sets" by advertisers who've been getting screwed for years.

This Week's Google Giggle

And speaking of bullshit... Google has this thing called "incognito" mode in which you are purportedly able to search anonymously. You may now begin laughing.

Guess what? It's bullshit! Whodathunkit?

According to a study by a researcher at Vanderbilt University, "While such data is collected with user-anonymous identifiers, Google has the ability to connect this collected information with a user's personal credentials stored in their Google Account." Shocked I tell you.

Brain Pollution

In what should be surprising to absolutely no one, Iran has been found to be messing with social media. Facebook, Twitter, and Google took down hundreds of propaganda accounts linked to Iran. Of course none of these companies - who claim to have thousands of geniuses working on security - were capable of finding these phony accounts. They had to be told about it by a cybersecurity company.

Favorite Chart Of The Week

Sometimes you have to scratch your head and ask yourself what planet some researchers live on? This chart appeared in Marketing Week and seems to have been created based on research done by a company called Toluna.

If you set out to devise a vaguer question, whose meaning was guaranteed to be lost on average people, I don't think you could top this one.

My overall experience with brands? You mean like what they taste like? How expensive they are? Are the packages pretty? What kind of gas mileage am I getting? What in the fucking world does "my overall experience with brands" have to do with GDPR?

Lazy Guy Makes Lame Excuses

I've got my hands full and may be putting this newsletter to sleep for a couple of weeks.

I'm finishing off what I hope will be the world's silliest book about advertising. The book is called "Biting The Hand: Laughing At The Industry That Feeds Me." It's coming next month.

Here's the scary part. It's supposed to be funny. Do you have any idea how many books have been published that were supposed to be funny and weren't? God help me.

And just in case you don't hear from me before then, I'm speaking to the Asociación Argentina de Publicidad in Buenos Aires in two weeks. You're all invited.

Subscribe here. All previous newsletters can be found here. For info on having Bob speak, go here