By Kelsey Jones
A few days ago, this ad showed up on the advertising sidebar of my Facebook:
This is hilarious to me because I’m married, which I also mention in my Facebook profile. When Facebook advertisers set up their campaigns, they can target their ads to certain profile demographics on Facebook, based on the information in each user’s profile. Areas include location, age, gender, education, etc.
It also includes dating status, which beardedmate.com should have focused on when setting up their campaign.
Because my profile says that I’m married, this ad shouldn’t have been shown to me. Wrong demographic targeting can lead to a discrepancy in impression counts, as well as click through rate and actual clicks accrued. For instance, even though I am not interested in a new ‘bearded mate’, I may click on the ad because I think it’s funny or to just look at the site, even though I have no intention of joining at any time. Because of this, my click would be a lost cause and therefore sunken cost to the advertiser. In addition, each time this ad is shown to someone who isn’t interested in dating a bearded mate (such as a lesbian, a married person, or someone who has ‘liked’ a Facebook page called “I love shaved faces”), it is costing beardedmate.com impressions. Besides screwing up their campaign data, this is especially important if they are paying by CPM, or cost-per-impression.
Instances like these need to be taken into consideration when setting up advertising on Facebook and other advertising mediums that allow businesses to highly target the demographic that will be shown the ad.
For more good information about Facebook Advertising, check out these articles:
For more good insight on how I feel about beards, check out my latest personal blog post: