Facebook: Cracking the Code Page #3

---

Depending on what we post

at any given moment,

Facebook can figure out

what we are doing and thinking,

and exploit that.

Facebook's very well aware

of you know our sentiment,

our mood and how

we talk to people

and it can put

all that data together

and start to understand

like who our exes are

and who our friends are

and who our old friends are

and who our new friends are

and that's how it really works

to incentivise another post.

What you're saying is

Facebook has the capacity

to understand our moods?

Yes.

Could that be used to influence

our buying behaviours?

Of course it can be used

to influence our behaviour

in general, not just buying.

You can be incredibly

hyper targeted.

Can I give you an example?

We don't always act our age

or according to

our gender stereotypes.

A middle-aged woman

might like rap music.

She is sick of getting ads

for gardening gloves

and weight loss.

So she posts on her Facebook

that she likes Seth Sentry's

Waitress Song.

Now she gets ads

for a streaming music service -

something she might

actually buy.

Adam Helfgott runs a digital

marketing company in New York.

He uses a tool called

Facebook Pixel.

Facebook gives it to advertisers

to embed in their sites.

They can track anybody

who visits their site

and target them with ads

on Facebook.

Well if you've ever logged

into Facebook

with any of your browsers,

it's a good chance

it'll know it's you.

You don't have to be logged in,

you have to have been there

at some point in time.

If it's a brand new computer

and you've never

logged into Facebook,

Facebook at that moment in time

won't know it's you,

but based upon their algorithms

and your usage

they'll figure it out.

So, what you can then do

is put this piece of script

onto your website.

And then use Facebook data

to find the people

that looked at your website

and then target ads to them.

That's correct.

Through Facebook.

- Yep.

That feels a little bit creepy,

I mean...

are there privacy issue

involved with that?

From a legal point of view

there's no privacy issue,

that's just the internet today,

and the state of it

and using a product

that generates a lot

of revenue for Facebook.

For advertisers it is a boon -

giving them access to the most

intimate details of our lives.

Megan Brownlow

is a media strategist

for Price Waterhouse Coopers

in Sydney.

When you change your status,

for example,

we might see something,

a young woman

changes her status to engaged.

Suddenly she gets ads

for bridal services.

These sorts of things are clues

about what her interests

might really be.

The research from consumers

is they don't like advertising

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes