Just had a conversation about Ben and Jerry's ice cream and then all of a sudden it appears on your Facebook or Instagram feed?
We've all had that moment where we're convinced that Facebook is listening to us. You've just had a conversation about avocados and suddenly your local health food shop is trying to sell you the organic Mexican fruit left right and centre. There's a little more at play here though than Siri being a spy.
What's actually happening could be numerous different things. The most likely is that Facebook just knows you, incredibly well. The thing is that Facebook isn't just the website that it once was. It's now a conglomerate which houses several digital products under one roof. One of the biggest - Instagram. That's why you'll often find that an ad you've been shown on your Facebook feed will probably appear on your Instagram too.
What's more, Facebook owns a service called 'Audience Network'. In essence, it is a display advertising service which places ads onto various websites which have opted to allow advertisers to show their content alongside their own. The most obvious examples of this are newspaper sites. Take a look at your local newspaper's website and you'll soon see visual ads surrounding the organic content.
What's the link here? It's simple. Facebook has access to pools of data, whether it be from it's own social network, Instagram or your interactions with it's Audience Network placements, it can stitch together your data to build a pretty comprehensive picture of what you're interested in. As a result, they can place that Ben and Jerry's ad on your timeline during summer because they know you're probably going to be interested. If you're not, they'll swap it out with something else until they hit the jackpot and you interact.
Of course, there is some deeper psychological explanations for the fact that you feel as if Facebook is listening to you. We're bombarded with advertising from the moment we turn on our devices so it's very likely that you're subconsciously being exposed to the latest ice cream flavour across various platforms but only realise it when this externalises in the physical world.
If your business is the answer to a potential customers problem, it's time to invest your time and capital into targeted advertising. At Dimension Creative, we're confident that we can enable you to achieve results. Get in touch today.