{"id":9605,"date":"2017-10-12T23:52:33","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T23:52:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/facebooks-ad-targeting-tools-could-be-a-valuable-supplement-to-census-data.html"},"modified":"2017-10-12T23:52:33","modified_gmt":"2017-10-12T23:52:33","slug":"facebooks-ad-targeting-tools-could-be-a-valuable-supplement-to-census-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/facebooks-ad-targeting-tools-could-be-a-valuable-supplement-to-census-data.html","title":{"rendered":"Facebook\u2019s ad targeting tools could be a valuable supplement to census data"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

Official census forms are an invaluable source for demographic data throughout the country, but for trends that occur on the scale of weeks or months rather than years, they\u2019re a bit lacking. But a new study shows that similar data used by Facebook to target ads could help fill in that blind spot.<\/p>\n

Sociologist Emilio Zagheni at the University of Washington looked into the possibility, in this case specifically regarding migrants in the U.S. and their movements between states. He\u2019s previously looked at this topici using Google+ and other internet-based metrics.<\/p>\n

Say you wanted to know whether East African migrant populations were tending towards settling in cities, suburbs, or rural areas. The census process is completed every decade, which really is too long a time to observe short-term trends that follow, for example, an economic recovery or important bill.<\/p>\n

But by using, or rather strategically mis<\/em>using Facebook\u2019s Ads Manager tool, one can find reasonably accurate and up-to-date info on, for example, Somalian migrants to the Chicago metro area versus outside the city. Facebook has already extracted all this data \u2014 why not use it?<\/p>\n

This data is, of course, not the whole picture. You\u2019re not finding all Somalian folks in the Chicago area, only Facebook users who choose to accurately report their country of origin and current location. Compared with the data in the Census Bureau\u2019s American Community Survey, it\u2019s not very reliable. But it\u2019s still valuable, Zagheni argues.<\/p>\n

\u201cIs it better to have a large sample that is biased, or a small sample that is nonbiased?\u201d he asks in a UW news release<\/a>. \u201cThe American Community Survey is a small sample that is more representative of the underlying population; Facebook is a very large sample but not representative. The idea is that in certain contexts, the sample in the American Community Survey is too small to say something significant. In other circumstances, Facebook samples are too biased.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWith this project we aim at getting the best of both worlds,\u201d he continues. \u201cBy calibrating the Facebook data with the American Community Survey, we can correct for the bias and get better estimates.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Facebook trends mirror the census data, but tend to underestimate numbers.<\/p>\n

With reliable but scarce ground truth data and noisy but voluminous supplementary data, you can put together a more precise picture than before \u2014 as long as you\u2019re careful to control for those biases. Data from other social networks could also be brought in to even things out.<\/p>\n

Zagheni and his team hope to refine the ideas demonstrated in the paper so that they can be applied in places like developing countries where self-reported data like Facebook\u2019s is easy to come by but reliable government data isn\u2019t. A \u201cgood enough\u201d sketch of the population and recent trends could help with things like prioritizing infrastructure investment or directing aid.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unfortunate that the whole thing required the researchers to abuse the advertising system to expose the data \u2014 surely Facebook can provide better access for research purposes. I asked the company whether that was a likely possibility. Zagheni seemed to like the idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cI certainly hope that there will be opportunities to work directly with Facebook on this line of research in the future,\u201d he wrote in an email to TechCrunch.<\/p>\n

The paper describing the team\u2019s work is published in the latest issue of the journal Population and Development Review<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Featured Image: FotografiaBasica\/iStock\/Getty Images<\/small><\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/Lb4vK_FxdeY\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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