{"id":208293,"date":"2025-03-11T00:31:13","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T05:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/a-b-test-tool-shows-facebook-constantly-experimenting-on-consumers-and-even-its-creators-dont-fully-know-how-it-works"},"modified":"2025-03-11T00:31:13","modified_gmt":"2025-03-11T05:31:13","slug":"a-b-test-tool-shows-facebook-constantly-experimenting-on-consumers-and-even-its-creators-dont-fully-know-how-it-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/03\/a-b-test-tool-shows-facebook-constantly-experimenting-on-consumers-and-even-its-creators-dont-fully-know-how-it-works","title":{"rendered":"A\/B test tool shows Facebook constantly experimenting on consumers\u2014and even its creators don\u2019t fully know how it works"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

On the persistent mischaracterization of Google and Facebook A\/B tests: How to conduct and report online platform studies.<\/p>\n

\n

Users of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok might think they\u2019re simply interacting with friends, family and followers, and seeing ads as they go. But according to research from the UBC Sauder School of Business, they\u2019re part of constant marketing experiments that are often impossible, even for the companies behind them, to fully comprehend. The findings are published<\/a> in the International Journal of Research in Marketing.<\/p>\n

For the study, the researchers examined all known published, peer-reviewed studies of the use of A\/B testing by Facebook and Google\u2014that is, when different consumers are shown different ads to determine which are most effective\u2014and uncovered significant flaws.<\/p>\n

UBC Sauder Associate Professors and study co-authors Dr. Yann Cornil and Dr. David Hardisty say that at any given moment, billions of social media users are being tested to see what they click on, and most importantly for marketers, what they buy. From that, one would think advertisers could tell which messages are effective and which aren\u2019t\u2014but it turns out it isn\u2019t nearly that simple.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the persistent mischaracterization of Google and Facebook A\/B tests: How to conduct and report online platform studies. Users of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok might think they\u2019re simply interacting with friends, family and followers, and seeing ads as they go. But according to research from the UBC Sauder School of Business, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-208293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}