socialmediocrity

According to a report on InsideFacebook, Facebook have filed for a patent on inferential ad targeting.

And according to the report this goes beyond friend-connections targeting, as is currently available in the Facebook ad platform (allowing advertisers to target *only* connected friends of existing “fans” or “likes”), and covers the possibility of broader inference. What does that mean? Well, in a nutshell, that if you have infirmation missing from your profile, but amongst your hundreds of connections on the network there is some commonality or popular data item for that missing information, then it may be infered that you also share that piece of information.

To give a similar example to that in InsideFacebook‘s article, if you don’t publish details of your education, but enough of your friends have indicated they are all connected to the same academic institution, then it may be infered that you also came from that same institution yourself, and advertisers may target you based on that inference.

All of which sounds teribly clever, and in keeping with the notion that you are defined by the company you keep. However, there are a number of reasons why this approach can only suppress advertising effectiveness if utilised by an advertiser.

Firstly, accuracy.

I won’t for one minute imply that Facebook’s data is not accurate (indeed they would counter that by declaring it is not their data, but that of the user), but maybe, just maybe, the absence of the data is just the start of the story. I can imagine, for example, and to continue the same example, that students of celebrated institutions will *tend* to have a greater propensity to publish their affiliation than those that attend less well known and less envied institutions.

So consequently, and especially when we have developed professional networks that include people from all sorts of backgrounds later in life, the celebrated institutions become, logically, over-represented (if anything). Inference Targeting in this example, then, would only serve to exaggerate that over-representation, and presumably those infered ads *should* work significantly less well (diluting the overall effectiveness substantially). Algorithms to the rescue? Maybe, but not for a while, and not before a lot of mis-attributed inferences had been made (and reported)

Secondly, User-Suspicion.

Even if the inference was accurate, it is easy to acknowledge that an advertisers’ use of data that I haven’t published about myself could “spook” a user – and is unlikely to solicit a positive response. I liken it to the email I got from Alliance & Leicester yesterday, warning me of a security issue and inviting me to reconfirm my details by following their link to the security test area. (I don’t bank with Alliance & Leicester) If I did bank with them though, it is to me clearly a con trick, and I can entirely understand why users might get caught out by it from time to time.

My final offering would be that, users who consciously publish these details will, in part at least, accept that such information may be used to deliver advertising to them. They will have already witnessed it, consciously or not, and will be familiar with its’ occurence. Arguably, they have given expresss permission for others to use that information. Users who have intentionally not published that data then, again at least in part, have specifically chosen not to publish that data, and consquently are likely to be less welcoming of those ads. And from a privacy perspective, this could be dangerous new ground for Facebook to be forging.

There are surely many other reasons why the inference itself may be inaccurate, but there is only very little prospect of better returns for advertisers. The only real purpose for this, then, is to dramatically increase the scale of a prospective campaign, and consequently drive ad revenues up whilst decreasing effectiveness.The same thing happens all the time, and we have seen it time and again, with some direct similies on the way paid-for Search has evolved.

If, or when, it becomes available, buyer-beware. Facebook’s focus on revenue will increasingly pit them against user experience, and this development might see another battle erupt between user and provider.