I put a lot of money into advertising through the "proper channels" for my business, including Facebook Ads. We were crushed by a competitor who activated a few links within his PBN and spent some serious time astroturfing, both tactics that I had refused to engage in.
The sad reality of online marketing is that people who are buying ads are suckers. The only way to be competitive online is to actively game the mechanisms that the few big traffic brokers use to determine rank.
I'm not sure I understand your question. Astroturfing is getting online and posting positive stuff about the product while posing as many unaffiliated persons on forums, review sites, social media, etc. This creates an appearance of high popularity and user satisfaction, and like astroturf, you can't tell it's "fake" from a glance. This creates a buzz that causes real users to pay attention and join in.
Since this company was targeting Facebook, if they wanted to astroturf, they'd do it by taking control of many Facebook accounts and posting positive stuff about their product in niche groups, on the product page, etc.
You understood the question perfectly. Sorry if I wasnt't clear enough. Thanks for explaining it to me. Call me naive but I didn't know they go to that length. I am aware of usual infomercial, PBN and outreach stuff but building the whole armada of of fake identities.
I am all for playing clean but in this case it seems there is no other way than joining this train(wreck).
The sad reality of online marketing is that people who are buying ads are suckers. The only way to be competitive online is to actively game the mechanisms that the few big traffic brokers use to determine rank.