Facebook’s Bidding Process for Political Advertisers
Supplement info: https://adespresso.com/blog/everything-need-know-facebook-ads-bidding/
In the past few years, there has been a growing problem with Facebook, fake news, and advertisements. Malicious advertisers have taken advantage of Facebook’s easy bidding process for ads in an attempt to sway national events such as elections. In the 2016 election, Russians used fake accounts and pages to run ads in hope of influencing the American public on voting in a way that benefits their country (towards Trump). In an attempt to establish a consistency in transparent and truthful political ad campaigns, Facebook plans to require political advertisers to undergo an authentication process and reveal their affiliation alongside their advertisements.
This raises several concerns for Facebook’s original bidding process for ads. Essentially, potential advertisers are competing with other bidders in a world-wide auction in order to buy what Facebook is selling (ad space). However, because of this new authentication process, it is not a sure thing that you will get the ad space despite having the highest bid in the auction. Because of this new process, not just anyone can post ads on Facebook anymore. So, not only do you have to get evaluated, you also have to have the highest bid. Ultimately, Facebook will now have the final decision in who runs their political advertisements and it won’t be as fair as a process as the original bidding scheme to get the ad space.
Facebook’s advertisement bidding process has several different ways of payment. You can be charged in terms of Conversions, Link clicks, impressions, daily unique reach, post engagement, brand awareness, leads, and landing page views (supplement info). The most important option in regard to political campaigns is arguably Conversions because in this method, Facebook will deliver your advertisements to the people, who are most likely to convert (supplement info). This directly relates to Facebook’s problem with political advertisers who are posting fake news or misleading information since they are targeting the most vulnerable people. Personally, I think that making political advertisers go through an authentication process as well as a bidding process is smart in terms of stopping the spread of misinformation, but I think it could give Facebook too much power and could limit free speech.