Clever or creepy? Facebook listens in and sends ads whizzing your way
Thinking about a purchase and sharing your thoughts with your Facebook status box . . before you can blink a targeted ad may be on its way to you
So you're on your Facebook page and you type into your status box, "Boy, I could go a pizza for dinner" and before you can say 'cheese', there is a web ad from Domino's pizza! Sounds like science fiction - but it's happening right now
A new programme capable of serving up ads as fast as members can post a status update, is being tested on 1 percent of Facebook users. That's five million people.
The advertising test, reported in AdAge, and followed up by the New York Post, delivers promotions based on real-time conversations.It's either a "brave new world of real-time advertising"- one point of view - or a source of privacy concerns - the other viewpoint.
Paul Verna, a senior analyst with eMarketer, told the Post it was an opportunity for advertisers to get in on the conversation, and to have that timing advantage was potentially huge.
But he cautioned, " Facebook has to pay close attention to not overstepping that balance or risk freaking people out, invading privacy and going over that line."
Facebook is serving up the real-time ads based on the same information it already gathers on users, only faster, said other experts. Until now, search ads had been seen as the best way to reach customers who were thinking of buying.
Michael Lazerow, chief executive of Buddy Media praised the new pathway for advertisers. "This is even better than Google search,"he said "The idea that you can take what people are doing, thinking and caring about right now and deliver content based on that is pretty powerful."
However Forrester Research analyst Sucharita Mulpuru thought there was a creepiness factor. "As it is, people wonder if Facebook is monitoring their conversations. This pretty much confirms that Facebook is." Another commentator thought it was "a bit like eavesdropping."
AdAge emphases that Facebook has been delivering targeted ads based on wall posts and status updates for some time," but never on a real-time basis."
The real aim of the test, according to Facebook, is to figure out if those kinds of ads can be served at split-second speed, as soon as the user makes a statement that is a match for an ad in the system.
A spokesman for Facebook said the test will go on indefinitely, but declined to comment further or discuss the results.
Meantime Facebook ad revenue is booming: $1.86 billion last year and forecast to double to $4.05 billion this year.