You know how its really creepy when you go looking for a new TV online and then go to Facebook and the ad spaces that you typically ignore are now populated with advertising for the very brands of TV you just checked out? Until now, theyve been the product of third-party ad networks and creepy data aggregators like Acxiom while Facebook itself had kept its hands clean by not selling the data it had acquired about your Web browsing habits. But in an effort to bring you even creepier, more targeted ads, Facebook will now be making more info about you available to advertisers.
When we ask people about our ads, one of the top things they tell us is that they want to see ads that are more relevant to their interests, reads an actual sentence presumably written by a human being at Facebook and not some automated copy-bot intended to mimic human speech.
Unless weve completely misjudged the entire human race, we doubt the first thing that pops into most folks heads when asked about Facebook advertising is Please make the ads eerily specific to things that I was just browsing online!
More likely the real top response to questions about Facebook ads is For the love of god, please give me a way to block them and not have them track my every movement.
Starting soon in the US, we will also include information from some of the websites and apps you use, continues the Facebook statement, which we hear in the voice of the HAL 9000, or maybe the woman who narrates House Hunters on HGTV. This is a type of interest-based advertising, and many companies already do this.
Facebook has long been following you around the Web, quietly snickering at you for the music you buy and silently cocking an eyebrow for thinking you can still fit into the same size jeans you wore in college. But until now, it had tracked users under the pretense of security. This mornings announcement shows the sites true intentions.
