The Evolution of Targeted Advertising

What if you could target your ads to single Catholic women between the ages of 32 and 47 who enjoy hiking and playing poker?

I would be interested to see what kinds of ads you would be producing for this demographic, but the benefits of such precision targeting are staggering. Distributing the same ad to all visitors of your site runs into some obvious complications. High schoolers are not likely to care much about your ad for a financial services company, and John McCain will not benefit greatly from a Huggies campaign (or would he?).

Everyone knows that Facebook collects information from its users using dozens of demographic categories. A lot of people even know about and use Facebook's API to target specific ads to specific demographics that are defined by the Facebook user itself. However, far too many advertisers still fail to recognize the advertising potential this affords.

As many of you know, AdMazing's parent company, FamilyLink.com, is responsible for the "We're Related" Facebook application. This app is rated the 6th most popular Facebook app and boasts 47 million total users, 15 million monthly active users, and 220 million monthly impressions. The numbers alone may seem staggering, but numbers don't tell the whole story.

AdMazing is currently undergoing an effort to collect additional demographic information on all "We're Related" users (rest assured—the data being collected is not attributed to any user and fully complies with Facebook's Terms of Service). With this data, we will be able to use hundreds of different demographic sets to sell to advertisers. This type of targeted advertising enjoys significantly more success than traditional advertising (of course, general websites do not enjoy the plethora of user-specific demographic information that Facebook offers).

As an Internet user myself, I have seen my fair share of banner ads, text ads, and popup ads (as has nearly everyone). I can honestly say it is refreshing to see ads once in a while that I'm actually interested in and that in some way correspond to my interests. The evolution of targeted advertising is not merely about making more money—it involves providing users with a more personalized and comfortable Internet experience.

Would love to hear your thoughts.

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