Hillary Clinton addressed the heightened potential for foreign manipulation of elections via social media platforms ahead of the 2018 midterm elections in a tweet last night:
Brad Parscale, the Trump campaign's digital director, alleged that the Trump campaign had been able to push ads on Facebook with extremely low CPMs (cost per thousand impressions):
Clinton herself responded to this tweet regarding Parscale:
Clinton's tweet prompted a responsefrom Facebook exec Andrew Bosworth (known to most as simply Boz):
"Lots of confusion about ads pricing today. Remember, price for any given impression is determined by an auction so by definition this pricing cannot be discriminatory."
"Two advertisers trying to reach different audiences will pay different amounts, but that’s the same with billboards or any other media (think times square vs rural Montana)"
"If you are measuring “cost per outcome” then obviously the creative plays a huge role, but that’s not the same as measuring cost per impression for the same audience"
"The only caveat is that our auction favors good creative which improves user experience. However that benefit is on the order of +/- 10%, meaningful for advertisers but far from 200x"
