Comments on: Facebook Reality Slap

By: Kel

Kel — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 15:15:27 +0000

lisa, i hadn’t seen the appearance. thanks for sharing!

By: Lisa

Lisa — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:03:43 +0000

Nice article. Did you seeArtie's appearance On Late Night with Jimmy Fallon?

By: Kel Kelly Blog - Pimpin’ To Teens

Kel Kelly Blog - Pimpin’ To Teens — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:14:03 +0000

[...] and psychographic data it pulls from your profile. Many of you will recall my previous post called Facebook Reality Slap where it became clear through the ads it served me that Facebook thought I was a fat, wrinkly, [...]

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 04:04:37 +0000

Thanks, I figure if you waste my space then you can afford to waste money. I swear though that I may change my single status just to avoid those dating ads.
Here is the job experiment I did for One Day, One Job.
http://www.onedayonejob.com/blog/use-facebook-ads-to-make-employers-hunt-you-down/

By: Kel

Kel — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 00:33:48 +0000

alex, clicking to make the spammer pay is brilliant! i like your style. hey, the link you posted doesn’t work. would love to see it. try to post it again. thanks!

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 23:59:04 +0000

It is amazing to see how many different ads I get these days. Some are so stupid (like never shave again) that I click them just to cost the ad spammer money. On the flip side I got a chance to advertise to potential employers and had some great results. Check it out at http://tinyurl.com/69xhcz. Love the blog and tweets!

By: Kel

Kel — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:25:50 +0000

megan, that is so funny! as you know, planning weddings are quite the undertaking. better to get a jump on it now just in case your marriage doesn’t work out. haha!

By: Megan

Megan — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:18:44 +0000

Well, if we hadn’t already figured out that Facebook doesn’t always do the greatest job of giving you ads that match your profile, this would prove it. Today I got an ad from David’s Bridal telling me to “click here to plan my dream wedding and I could win it” even though my relationship status is, and has been since I opened the account, set as married. Guess they think I might want to start planning my next wedding.

By: Abbie

Abbie — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 01:32:10 +0000

If only, Kel. If only!

Yeah, I see the same crappy ads that you and the others do.

Which reminds me: I need to whip up some Oprah-Rachel Ray-approved food for dinner. Then, I’m diving right in to my body hair removal project. I wonder if Bombay Sapphire Gin works as a topical anesthetic … hmm.

By: Kel

Kel — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 23:10:34 +0000

abbie, well clearly your clients are paying you too much. haha!

By: Abbie

Abbie — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 22:29:08 +0000

Gee, Kel, this is strange. I don’t see any of the ads you and the others do.

The ones that appear when I log onto Facebook are for Maseratis, Bulgari jewelry, Net-Jets, Cristal, Hermes leather goods, and Ritz-Carlton luxury resort timeshares. Weird, huh?

By: Kel

Kel — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 21:48:07 +0000

terri, clearly the ads are not appropriately targeted because you are one of the most fit women i know! they should be serving you ads for triathlons in your area. haha!

By: Terri

Terri — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 21:26:02 +0000

I had never noticed the ads, so I had to check it out! I am getting things like: Are you a woman over 40?; TeeBeeDee: A new social media site for those that have lived a little; Oprah’s Top Diet; and Weight Watchers. I think they are trying to say: “Hey you are over 40 and have lived a little too much so we think you need to go on a diet.”

By: Kel

Kel — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:35:18 +0000

myke, maybe the head of advertising at facebook is married to a really hairy guy. haha! haven’t seen the ads from friends, but now i will keep an eye out for them. i hope i don’t get any hair removal ads from friends. that’s a place i just don’t want to go…

By: myke

myke — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 14:49:58 +0000

Not sure out targeted they are. I am a 29y/o male and was presented with the same hair removal ads. Found myself saying, ‘wow these are way off base!’. Have you seen the ads from your friends? I have seen some saying “So-and-so loves Monster.com!”.

By: Kel

Kel — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 10:38:19 +0000

karthick, now that’s funny. how could they not know you are a suave chick magnet that women flock too?! haha! thanks for stopping by and taking the time to post a response. look forward to hearing from you again.

By: Karthick

Karthick — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 10:29:04 +0000

Haha, I love your style of writing Kel!For some reason most of my ads seem to have either dating or don’t be a loser in them (sort of the old Charles Atlas memories flood back in…). I refuse to own up to that reality though :/. They have so much work to do to reach the Google targeting levels.

By: Kel

Kel — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 21:02:07 +0000

michael, true that! sustainable web 2.0 monetization is still an elusive nut to crack. i expect a great deal of discussion on this next week in ny at o’reilly’s web 2.0 expo.

By: Kel

Kel — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:58:42 +0000

chris, thanks for the tip. it will be a whole new world when i get my macbook pro air. of course apple needs to begin shipping the product. don’t they know i’m waiting?! haha!

By: Michael

Michael — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:35:54 +0000

Your FaceBook ad encounter is symptomatic of the underlying challenge faced by social networking sites: How to monetize site traffic and establish a sustainable business. Ad revenue embedded within social networking sites appears to be the only revenue source available to social networking sites. Or they could sell the user information to advertisers.

As cool as social networks are today, the question remains, how will they become sustainable? Venture Capital runways (funding) only last so long.

It took amazon.com 10 years to figure out how to turn a profit. I suspect social networks will not be given the same time to figure out how to become revenue positive.

What do you think surfer mom?

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 18:37:38 +0000

If you ever get sick of all those ads, and you are using Firefox, install the GreaseMonkey plug-in and use this script to block out all ads:
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/13787

Of course, this isn’t nearly as fun as comparing Facebook’s profiles!

By: Kel

Kel — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:54:55 +0000

trudy, hahaha! i was with a male friend who is about my age. we were looking at something on his profile page. the ad they served him was for a back hair removal product. ick! double ick!

By: Trudy

Trudy — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 16:49:50 +0000

Oh, Thank God – I thought I was the only fat, hairy, wrinkly athlete on fb! I bet we could start a fb Group

By: Kel

Kel — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:25:19 +0000

tara, that’s good to know!

By: Kel

Kel — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 14:24:55 +0000

jack, i love your insight. i do believe facebook has an unprecedented asset — 100 million memmbers with lots of granular data on each of them. they have trumped any other online property particularly given the broad range of its membership. however, you bring up a good point. the ad pipeline is still limited due to the simple fact that the rest of the biz world has not yet had the epipahany of how they can best leverage this opp. in the meantime, i encourage the membership to maintain its sense of humor as they get served ads that may not be well aligned to needs. haha!

By: Tara

Tara — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:16:08 +0000

Funny enough I keep on getting Monster ads wanting to know where my career is? Rest assured – it’s with you.

By: Jack

Jack — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:16:03 +0000

Ironically, I’ve noticed Facebook has inserted very similar ads on my pages, too (a 45 year old male with vastly different profile data points!) While the concept of targeted advertising is powerful, I believe there are shortcomings in many related arenas. Advertisers have yet to find a truly effective way to become an integrated part of the Web 2.0 experience. Though it carries the moniker “interactive,” most current advertising efforts have yet to become truly integrated components of the web 2.0 framework. More significantly, advertising sales continue to be driven by a publisher’s internal sales forces or advertising networks. Though a networks reach is often broader, neither source captures more than a small percentage of potential advertisers and campaigns, especially if the publisher is capable of delivering a highly granular profile of targeted consumers. So, I think the “reality slapping” ads we have each been served aren’t so much the function of “flawed” generalizations based upon our profile, but rather the product of a limited pipeline of available ads (after all, they’ve got to serve up something to try and generate a revenue stream). Then again, perhaps I’m just trying to rationalize against the undeniable fact I have truly attained middle age