Privacy on Facebook: What information does Facebook use in its new ad targeting system?

Ruslan over at AbuZant Web Goodies has picked apart the code on Facebook’s new pages service to see exactly what they’re using to target the new social ads.

Apparently he downloaded the javascript file that delineates the targeting variables (he posted the code in his post, but it’s long and scary looking, so I opted not to re-post it here). He sums up, however, that:

They are targeting the using “at least” information about:

* Your political view
* Your sex
* Your age
* Marital status
* Country, City and/or Region
* Education Status
* Workplace

This is really not that much of a surprise. Part of the reason everyone has been so interested in this new ad system is that it can rely on a wealth of information that simply isn’t available to services like adSense.

In a practical sense, I’d say don’t upload any personal information to Facebook that you don’t want used by Facebook to try to target ads.

But in a realistic sense, is it a problem that Facebook has all of this personal data, and is using it to target ads? Certainly if the ads are annoying or useless. But what if the ads are really really good? In other words, at what point do you stop trading privacy for relevant advertising?

ps. It’s not fair to say there shouldn’t be ads. If that’s the case, then maybe the question is “how much would you pay per month to use Facebook?”

Welcome to our community! If you like what you see, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed!