In an interview I heard on NPR’s All Things Considered with Jonah Bloom of Advertising Age, they talked about a system that Facebook is developing to specifically show ads in your “News Feed” that target you based on what you’ve put in your profile.

Is this a bad thing?

Since the internet became popular and mainstream in society, people have always been worried about the privacy of their personal information. From the scare of “cookies” to the reality of worms and virii — Facebook using information that you’re already putting on the internet for all to see shouldn’t be much of a concern. If you’re on Facebook, unless you’ve locked yourself down using the Privacy Settings, most of your information is available to the outside world.

Another similar case was that of GMail “reading your mail” to target advertising. Again, being a developer myself, it’s another irrational fear. Your e-mails are not encrypted, which means they are sitting in a database of some sort somewhere where eyes can read it if they wanted to. If you’re interested in encrypting your mail activities, read this article.

I find myself, like most, annoyed by irrelevant ads that could induce seizures. Though, if an ad shows up in my News Feed that’s actually relevant to my interests, more power to them. It is a win-win situation for advertisers and consumers: Advertisers will be in touch with their proper audience, and the audience will be more receptive to their marketing.

Listen to the audio here: NPR: Facebook Brings Nosy Advertising to Members

What do you think?

In the grand scheme of things, will this take away from other ad services? The majority of the high school and college generation is on Facebook.  If advertisers have the ability to target ads based on their interests, why go anywhere else?

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