<story><title>Scams upon scams: The data-driven advertising grift</title><url>https://anotherangrywoman.com/2023/07/05/scams-upon-scams-the-data-driven-advertising-grift/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>marginalia_nu</author><text>I always feel that a good deal of data-driven anything is basically modern divination.  The median data-driven decision might as well have been based on haruspicy.&lt;p&gt;You can construct experiments to demonstrate damn near anything is true, and without (or even with) a rigorous background in statistics and scientific methodology, it&amp;#x27;s very hard to examine the supposed evidence.&lt;p&gt;I know I say this a lot, but constructing solid experiments is time consuming and difficult.  It&amp;#x27;s hard even if you you&amp;#x27;re trying to be fair.  Professors routinely get this wrong despite a literal decade of formal training in the scientific method and half a lifetime of practical experience with this exact craft; despite how fucking up puts their career, reputation and livelihood in jeopardy.   Not only does this happen &lt;i&gt;a lot&lt;/i&gt;, bad science routinely slips through peer review as well.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s the state of affairs in the spaces that in general aren&amp;#x27;t extremely adversarial, where the people involved in constructing the experiments in general don&amp;#x27;t have a a vested interest in trying to mislead you. (Scientific fraud still happens of course, but Jan Hendrik Schön is the exception and not the rule)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>IG_Semmelweiss</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s always the famous case of Uber made 120M cuts[2] in their 150M adspend, nothing absolutely changed in their app installs. [1]&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;thehustle.co&amp;#x2F;01072021-uber-ad-spend&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;thehustle.co&amp;#x2F;01072021-uber-ad-spend&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.forbes.com&amp;#x2F;sites&amp;#x2F;augustinefou&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;when-big-brands-stopped-spending-on-digital-ads-nothing-happened-why&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.forbes.com&amp;#x2F;sites&amp;#x2F;augustinefou&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;01&amp;#x2F;02&amp;#x2F;when-bi...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Scams upon scams: The data-driven advertising grift</title><url>https://anotherangrywoman.com/2023/07/05/scams-upon-scams-the-data-driven-advertising-grift/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>marginalia_nu</author><text>I always feel that a good deal of data-driven anything is basically modern divination.  The median data-driven decision might as well have been based on haruspicy.&lt;p&gt;You can construct experiments to demonstrate damn near anything is true, and without (or even with) a rigorous background in statistics and scientific methodology, it&amp;#x27;s very hard to examine the supposed evidence.&lt;p&gt;I know I say this a lot, but constructing solid experiments is time consuming and difficult.  It&amp;#x27;s hard even if you you&amp;#x27;re trying to be fair.  Professors routinely get this wrong despite a literal decade of formal training in the scientific method and half a lifetime of practical experience with this exact craft; despite how fucking up puts their career, reputation and livelihood in jeopardy.   Not only does this happen &lt;i&gt;a lot&lt;/i&gt;, bad science routinely slips through peer review as well.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s the state of affairs in the spaces that in general aren&amp;#x27;t extremely adversarial, where the people involved in constructing the experiments in general don&amp;#x27;t have a a vested interest in trying to mislead you. (Scientific fraud still happens of course, but Jan Hendrik Schön is the exception and not the rule)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>goodcharles</author><text>Meanwhile, people with no scientific training are entrusted to run A&amp;#x2F;B tests and other web experiments.&lt;p&gt;Practically all web marketing experiments and analysis is invalid, and not replicable. But it pays the bills for everyone to pretend its legitimate.</text></comment>