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The U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) Minority yesterday released roughly 3,400 ads that ran on Facebook and Instagram leading up to the 2016 U.S. presidential elections.

The ads, which were purchased by the Russian-based Internet Research Agency (IRA), ran between Q2 2015 and Q3 2017, meaning that some of them continued to run after the election and President Trump’s January 2017 inauguration.

“There’s no question that Russia sought to weaponize social media platforms to drive a wedge between Americans, and in an attempt to sway the 2016 election,” said Representative Adam Schiff, Ranking Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, in a statement. “Russia sought to divide us by our race, by our country of origin, by our religion, and by our political party.”

The Nature of the Ads

We combed through as many of the ads as we could, and based on the sample we viewed prior to publishing this post, they accurately reflect Schiff’s statement. 

The ads represent only a portion of what has been reviewed by the HPSCI Minority over the course of its investigation of Russian interference with U.S. electoral processes.

In addition to these ads, the Minority noted in a statement that many of these IRA-created accounts — which purchased the ads — also published 80,000 pieces of organic content, which the were exposed to an estimated 126 million American consumers.

That content was not included in what was released yesterday, and its nature remains unclear. As for the ads, the Minority states that they were exposed to over 11.4 million American Facebook and Instagram users.

The IRA-purchased ads focus on a range of issues to a somewhat superficial degree, including:

• Race
• Police Brutality
• Patriotism
• Civil Rights
• Sexual Orientation
• Immigration
• Economy

Without looking at every single ad, it’s difficult to say if a majority of them leaned to one particular political aisle. For many of the above-listed issues, there were accounts created and ads published for both sides.

On the issue of refugees, for example, each of the below pages (and the ads bought to promote them) appears to take a contrasting side — yet both were the work of the IRA.

Some of the ads contained information and images that were redacted “to protect personally-identifiable information (PII),” according to a statement released by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Many of the ads were also purchased to promote events falling on either side of contentious issues. In addition to certain content redactions, the Minority says it has urged Facebook to inform creators of “genuine online events” that they might have been unknowingly advertised by the IRA.

In addition to those redactions, the statement notes that Facebook notified users whose genuine online events were unwittingly promoted by the IRA.

The nature of the ads released by Congress seems to be overwhelmingly issue-based, most of them not pertaining to a certain candidate but rather emphasizing topics that are often sources of debate and divisiveness — especially during election season.

In October, Facebook introduced a verification process that would only allow authorized advertisers to run electoral ads on Facebook or Instagram — that is, ads for a specific candidate — and will also contain a “Political Ad” label.

That same process will apply to those seeking to publish issue-based ads, though at the time, Facebook did not say it would require them to be labeled. Earlier this week, however, Facebook announced that it will introduce labeling requirements for issue-based ads — a move that was perhaps anticipatory given the subsequent release of these ads.

Other ads are completely irrelevant to the most hotly contested issues during elections, such as those from an account called Memopolis, which shared meme content targeted to users who had indicated an interest in pages for Imgur and iFunny. However, even the content published by this account could be considered controversial, such as this ad that ran in June 2016.

Nonetheless, a number of ads do focus on specific political and former presidential candidates, sharpening the associations voters make between elected officials and the country’s most heated controversies. The ad below, for instance, was published in Instagram in seeming opposition to former candidate Hilary Clinton, and targeted to users whose interests include former candidate Bernie Sanders.

That targeting information is crucial — and where the ads become most complicated.

The Targeting

Alongside images of the ads themselves, the HPSCI Minority also released the following details of each ad:

• The ad’s ID number
• The text that ran with the ad
• A link to the ad’s landing page
• The age, language, and location of the ad’s target audience
• The ad’s impressions, clicks, spend, and date of creation

In April, Facebook announced that it would be creating a public, searchable archive of political ads containing similar information to the PDFs released.

What we found particularly interesting was the nature of the targeting criteria for each ad. Facebook’s targeting tools allow advertisers to build a customized audience for promoted content, based on interests, location, age range, and other demographic information.

The IRA appears to have used these tools to its advantage, targeting each one to an audience with which it thought the somewhat polarizing content would resonate the most. For instance, here’s the targeting information for the ad promoting the “Stop A.I.” page above:

In examining each PDF release by Congress, we noticed that many ads follow a theme in when they were purchased and posted on Facebook. The one above, for instance, seems to follow a common age demographic we observed for many of the ads (18 – 65+).

We also noticed that a significant portion of the ads serve as duplicates of one another that were customized with different text or targeting information.

The following three ads, for example — which ran after Donald Trump was elected — all contain the same copy. However, each one contains different targeting information.

The first two are both targeted to users within 25 miles of Atlanta, GA, but the first one contains slightly more criteria under interests.

The third one appears to be targeted to the same interests as the first, but has a broader geographical range of the entire U.S.

By our analysis, these ads and were purchased in bulk over the course of each quarter between 2015 and 2017. The reason for that, most likely, was likely to maximize each ad’s impressions and increase the chances of sneaking through Facebook’s News Feed algorithm.

If 15 ads in a group of 20 on the same topic are intercepted by Facebook, for example, five would still be seen by Facebook users.

That could explain why the nearly 3,400 purchased ads also had such contrasting performance and impression numbers, according to the details released by the HPSCI Minority.

While some ads received more than half a million impressions, others promoting the same page — with the same copy — received zero. 

The Impact, and Facebook’s Response

What’s particularly interesting — and perhaps troubling — about the nature of these ads, is the degree to which they leveraged Facebook’s already built-in targeting tools.

As far as we’ve been told, these ads weren’t necessarily strategically created or conceptualized based on information that was improperly obtained, as per the Cambridge Analytica scandal earlier this year. Instead, they were created and targeted using the same ad customization criteria available to all advertisers: age, location, interests, etcetera.

That’s likely part of the motivation behind Facebook’s new labeling and verification standards. Shortly after these documents were released by the HPSCI Minority, the social network released its own statement in which it reiterated the measures it’s taking to prevent a repeated weaponization of its platform.

“This will never be a solved problem because we’re up against determined, creative and well-funded adversaries,” the statement reads. “But we are making steady progress.”

Among these changes are updates to Facebook’s ad targeting criteria, which include the removal of about one-third of the segments used by the IRA. It is unclear what those segments are.

“The full picture is astonishing,” says HubSpot Social Media Editor Henry Franco. “It’s reassuring to see Facebook taking some steps to improve its influence on elections and politics, but it’s also clear that the platform in 2016 was an open book for manipulating popular opinion for anyone with the time, resources, and commitment to get the job done.”

That picture still has yet to come completely into focus. The U.S. Special Counsel investigation into potential election interference is ongoing, and as the HPSCI Minority, some of the content in question has yet to be seen by the public.

“We will continue to work with Facebook and other tech companies,” Schiff said in his satement, “to expose additional content, advertisements, and information as our investigation progresses.”

Choosing your career path is arguably the most important decision of your life. But how do you know what a job is actually like if you’ve never had any experience working it?

If you landed on this blog post, you’re probably considering a career in public relations. The work definitely appeals to you, but you’re not entirely sure it’s the right choice. What if you realize it’s not actually your passion?

To help you answer these tough questions, we created this public relations career guide that’ll describe what exactly public relations is, the different career paths you can pursue, the industry’s salaries, internships, and the disciplines a public relations degree will cover.

Read on to find out if a career in public relations is right for you.

What is Public Relations?

Public Relations can be boiled down into two main responsibilities: promoting a brand and protecting it. On the promotional side of PR, professionals help businesses or individuals develop a positive reputation with the public through various unpaid or earned forms of communication, like placements in traditional media, social media, and blogs. On the protective side of PR, they help their company or clients maintain their public reputation or defend it during crises.

PR is unique because it allows brands to build a relationship with an audience through credible sources, like trusted news outlets.

But free publicity isn’t easy to get. Since journalists need to write stories that resonate with their own audiences, public relations professionals have to account for the interests of news outlets when they develop their PR strategy.

Another challenge in public relations is protecting a company or client’s reputation in the digital age. Humans have a negativity bias, which helps us be more aware of threats, so, naturally, negative news grabs and holds our attention better than positive news. It also fuels the virality of bad news on social media and Google, so it’s crucial for PR professionals to quickly react to any negative claims about their brand and mitigate the damage.

Careers in Public Relations

Promotional Side of Public Relations

On the promotional side of PR, your main job is to convince the media to write a positive story about you through press releases, story pitches, and press conferences. You can also manage your online and local community relations, handle investor relations, and even be your brand’s spokesperson.

Here are some roles you can pursue on the promotional side of PR:

Content Creation

The content creation team usually crafts positive stories about their brand that the media relations team pitches to journalists. These stories can also pique journalists’ interest on their own, like a press release about a major company merger. A member of this team writes press materials, bylined articles for news outlets, and can even make brand awareness videos.

Media Relations

The media relations team develop and maintain relationships with journalists, so they can pitch stories to them and seek out interview opportunities for their executive team. They also track all their press, social, and blog placements and measure and report their PR campaign’s effectiveness.

Social Media Community

The social media community team tracks and manages their company or client’s image on social media. They use social listening tools to gauge the company’s public reputation, and to bolster it, they interact with their social media following, make company announcements on social media, and find social media influencers to promote their brand.

Community Relations

The community relations team makes sure their company or client lives up to their potential as a socially responsible corporation. They do this by finding ways to associate their company or client with positive community events, like sponsoring an event, donating money to an organization, or working a philanthropy event. The brand’s impact on the community gives journalists positive stories to write, which increases their number of press placements and strengthens their public reputation.

Financial Communications

At public companies, the financial communications team forges relationships with analysts and investors to improve their financial reputation. They do this by fielding all analyst, media, and investor inquiries at shareholder meetings, press conferences, and private meetings. They also write earnings reports and the investor section on their website.

Spokesperson

A spokesperson is the face of their company’s brand. They speak to the general public on behalf of their company during press conferences, make T.V. appearances, and respond to any criticism the company might face.

Protective Side of PR

The protective side of PR is smaller than the promotional side but is just as important. You can usually pursue two career paths on this side of PR: managing a brand’s reputation or managing a company crisis.

Reputation Management

The reputation management team gauges their company or client’s public reputation by monitoring brand sentiment on social media, review sites, their ratings and reviews section on Facebook, their own online communities, and the news. This information helps them identify any complaints about their brand and quickly address them through social media and other communication channels online.

Crisis Management

The crisis management team help clients or their own company deal with major catastrophes caused by human error, intervention, or even malicious intent. They mitigate the damage by releasing statements that take responsibility for the issue, crafting company-wide responses to backlash, and spreading awareness for their plan to solve their problems through paid, earned, and owned marketing channels. They also appoint an official spokesperson to respond to any criticism on behalf of their brand at press conferences and interviews.

Public Relations Salaries

Listed below are the average salaries in Public Relations. We collected this data from Glassdoor’s anonymous salary submissions, which doesn’t account for the employees’ industry, company size, or years of experience.

Entry Level

Public Relations Assistant – $36,576

Public Relations Coordinator – $42,663

Mid-Level

Public Relations Associate – $44,222

Public Relations Specialist – $53,241

Management

Public Relations Manager – $71,468

Public Relations Director – $83,343

Public Relations Internships

With over 5,000 public relations internships listed on Glassdoor right now, public relations interns are high in demand. If you land a PR internship, you’ll likely work with multiple teams and take on a broad set of responsibilities like coordinating speaking engagements and media outreach, fielding incoming media requests, drafting press releases and media lists, maintaining social media pages, analyzing media coverage and PR campaign performance, updating reporter databases, and compiling press kits and media collateral.

Public Relations Degree

If you major in public relations during college, your degree will cover three main disciplines:

1. Communications and Media: you’ll study the birth of mass media, track its historical trends, and learn how media institutions have affected society.

2. Public Relations Theory and Application: you’ll learn the fundamentals and strategic concepts of PR, and at some universities, like Boston University, you can put your knowledge to use by running PR for an actual business or organization.

3. Writing for Mass Communication: you’ll learn how to write press releases, pitch emails, and speeches. You’ll also learn how to master the AP style of writing.

In addition to these core competencies, most PR programs require you to take classes in media ethics and law, multimedia storytelling, public speaking, journalism, advertising, marketing, American history, statistics, and business writing.

If you’re not a public relations major or you want to study something else, most PR departments and firms happily hire marketing, advertising, and journalism majors.

If you go to a liberal arts school, majoring in communications or english will give you the best shot of landing a job in public relations. These disciplines will teach you how to communicate clearly and think critically, which are the skills PR professionals need — their work is both creative and analytical.

There’s a huge difference between ordering a couch and ordering a pizza.

Hi, I’m Captain Obvious.

Here’s a less-obvious statement: the difference between a couch and a pizza isn’t just that you can eat one of them … It’s the point at which these orders officially belong to you. You pay for your pizza when the pizza arrives, but you pay for most other product orders (like couches) long before the item reaches your doorstep.

These other orders, which cost more to sell and deliver, are what help define the term “FOB shipping point.” Let’s explain what FOB shipping point means and how it affects both the seller and the buyer.

How FOB Shipping Point Affects the Seller

FOB shipping point is very common in the ecommerce industry. When ordering a couch, for example, customers typically agree to a sale at FOB shipping point. A couch costs a great deal of money up front for the business to produce and transport, especially if the business is shipping the couch far away. Customers who order this item online can’t easily assure the business they’ll be prepared to pay for it once the couch is delivered to them — so they pay up front

FOB shipping point allows the business to collect payment from the sale as soon as the couch is assembled and loaded onto the truck — protecting the business from a failed payment after the business already paid to transport the couch.

And because FOB shipping point holds the buyer responsible for freight costs (sometimes indicated by the term “FOB port”), the business can also save money in the event that the product is lost or damaged in transit. In these cases, it’s up to the customer to file a claim for reimbursement.

How FOB Shipping Point Affects the Buyer

Although FOB shipping point requires the buyer to make a financial commitment before receiving the product, it can also allow the buyer to have a product sent to their home without needing to be there when the product is delivered.

When ordering a product online, customers submit their billing information to the seller before placing their order and leaving the seller’s website. Once the seller begins shipping the item, the customer is billed for it. Depending on the product and the type of home it’s being sent to, the customer might not even need to be present to accept the package from the deliverer — the transaction has already taken place.

FOB Shipping Point vs. FOB Destination

Now, let’s talk about pizza.

Food deliveries are just one type of product that frequently isn’t a FOB shipping point sale. When customers order a pizza, it doesn’t officially become theirs until they sign the receipt shown to them by the pizza delivery driver when he/she arrives at the customer’s doorstep.

This is known as FOB destination. Rather than charging for the pizza upon its departure from the restaurant — which would be a FOB shipping point sale — the restaurant collects payment after the pizza is shipped and delivered to the customer. Customers are also not responsible for the pizza’s shipping costs under the FOB destination sale model.

Pizza delivery is a great candidate for FOB destination, because delivery costs might simply be a delivery driver’s normal paycheck. FOB destination also allows the pizza place to cook pizza and serve onsite customers more quickly, since the delivery staff is managing each transaction.

There are many businesses out there that could benefit from FOB destination sales over FOB shipping point sales. A business might use FOB destination if it finds its risk of product damage while in transit is low, and therefore the company can cover the shipping cost itself. Perhaps the business’s brand is known for free shipping.

It’s important to examine what your customer expects when they place an order. As long as the company’s delivery system supports the business and your buyers’ experience, you can focus more on the things that help you attract customers in the first place.