Hawk-eyed Facebook advertisers watching every entry
22 Sep 2009
Advertising agencies in Australia are keeping a close eye on the pages of the six million Facebook users to update advertisements of products as soon as there is some change in the social networking site user's account status.
Advertisers are paying tens of thousands of dollars a month for access to Facebook profiles in order to target ads directly to specific users, a widely-publicised report that first appeared in The Sunday Telegraph newspaper.
Business houses seem to target potential customers on the social network site according to sex, age, location, relationship status, job title, workplace or university. In fact, advertisers respond to a Facebook page update in not more than few seconds.
If the relationship status is suddenly turned single, then dating agency ads immediately pop up on the Facebook page. And when it is turned from single to engaged, the previous ad generally gets replaced by something like weight loss programmes and planning hens' nights. Married? Then you must be thinking about babies, credit cards and mortgages.
Even subjects such as favourite music or pastimes can be drilled into for the purposes of marketing.
In an example quoted by The Sunday Telegraph, Shannan Human, 30, of Dee Why, said ads on her profile page changed drastically when she changed such identifying details as her relationship status.
