Why Donald Trump Was the ‘Perfect Candidate’ for Facebook
A former member of Facebook’s advertising team argues that Team Trump paid far less for ads on Facebook than Hillary Clinton’s campaign
Here is the central tenet of Facebook’s business: If lots of people click on, comment on, or share an ad, Facebook charges that advertiser less money to reach people. The platform is a brawl for user attention, and Facebook sees a more engaging ad as a better ad, which should be shown to more users.
This has been true for years. No one inside or outside Facebook has ever hidden this fact. All the dynamics of the News Feed — most classed under the rubric of “clickbait” — also exist in paid advertising, but success (or failure) is denominated in dollars.
And yet, in the context of the 2016 Presidential Election, this way of auctioning advertising — originally developed by Google and normalized in the pre-Trump age — can seem strange, unfair, and possibly even against the rules that govern election advertising.
In a new essay at Wired, the former Facebook advertising staffer Antonio García Martínez lays out what is undoubtedly true: Trump’s ads had far higher engagement rates, which meant he paid less to reach a given number of people.
