4 ms·

I wonder how much of this is still possible. I have been trying to define an audience (ie, people who work at surfing schools), without much success.

petercooper 4y ago
I recall FB became quite keen on not letting you target particularly small audience groups which would have made it even harder. However, a friend of mine recently got an ad targeting his name with some custom clothing and was confused how it happened because Facebook doesn't let you target by name. My speculation (and I'm intrigued if anyone thinks this is possible) is because his email address is $fname@$fname$lname.com, an advertiser autogenerated a giant list of common first names and my friend's last name plus common email providers or domain name patterns, fed it into FB's Audience Manager, and then targeted all the ones that matched FB logins. A sort of dictionary attack, if you will.
- jvanderbot 4y ago
  More likely FB is trialling a way to put $name in an ad?
  - petercooper 4y ago
    It had a photo showing the clothing with the name on, but maybe, though it didn't smell that way to me.
- fsckboy 4y ago
  I don't know how the Facebook end of the targeting worked, but having your friend's name and email address on any number of probably-even-freely-available lists seems highly probable, no need to autogenerate them
- dalys 4y ago
  I think your guess would be the most likely. Step 1. Get a huge email list Step 2. Grep that email list for peter Step 3. Do a custom audience in FB and run a Peter t-shirt campaign I don't know any other way to do anything "dynamic" in Facebook Ads. And FB doesn't really like that advertisers creep out their audience, even though they can. I assume it's the reason behind their policy that you can't call out personal attributes. E.g. you can't say "Hey hetereosexual white person! Click here", but you have to write it as "Here's a fun website for hetereosexual white people". I just double checked the policies and using a first name in the ad is actually not allowed, BUT I think you can get around that by having a general ad like "Cool name t-shirts" and then the image happens to have "Peter" printed on the t-shirt. Source: https://transparency.fb.com/policies/ad-standards/objectionable-content/personal-attributes https://transparency.fb.com/policies/ad-standards/objectiona...
  - petercooper 4y ago
    It was the (popular) last name in this case. I don't know if that makes any difference. Glad that someone with almost certainly more knowledge thinks it might be viable though. I'm a total FB advertising novice so I'm aware of the options, but not so aware of how it works in practice ;-)
aczerepinski 4y ago
I similarly have not had success defining most targets I want. It says “click here for advanced targeting” but that 404s.
dalys 4y ago
I think that might be hard even if there was a specific target that was "People who work at surfing schools" because people don't really keep their FB job description up to date. I would just target "Surfboard (sporting goods)", "Surfing (water sport)" and similar and then let the FB algorithm do it's magic. I.e. create a very broad targeting for your ad and then let the ad run for a while and get results, and those results will let FB automatically fine tune the targeting for you. It costs some money but it will probably be better in the end. Unofficial rumours says you need around 50 conversion events on ad for the ad to be fully "trained", which can mean a couple of hundred dollars. Remember the targets you add have a OR function between them, unless you use the "Narrow audience" button in the targeting. If you really want to narrow down you could do "Surfing (water sport)" and narrow the audience and find some interest that is AND <insert teaching-related interest targeting>. People that work as surf school teachers could possibly have been identified by FB with some kind of teaching-interest.

petercooper 4y ago

I recall FB became quite keen on not letting you target particularly small audience groups which would have made it even harder. However, a friend of mine recently got an ad targeting his name with some custom clothing and was confused how it happened because Facebook doesn't let you target by name. My speculation (and I'm intrigued if anyone thinks this is possible) is because his email address is $fname@$fname$lname.com, an advertiser autogenerated a giant list of common first names and my friend's last name plus common email providers or domain name patterns, fed it into FB's Audience Manager, and then targeted all the ones that matched FB logins. A sort of dictionary attack, if you will.

jvanderbot 4y ago
More likely FB is trialling a way to put $name in an ad?
- petercooper 4y ago
  It had a photo showing the clothing with the name on, but maybe, though it didn't smell that way to me.
fsckboy 4y ago
I don't know how the Facebook end of the targeting worked, but having your friend's name and email address on any number of probably-even-freely-available lists seems highly probable, no need to autogenerate them
dalys 4y ago
I think your guess would be the most likely. Step 1. Get a huge email list Step 2. Grep that email list for peter Step 3. Do a custom audience in FB and run a Peter t-shirt campaign I don't know any other way to do anything "dynamic" in Facebook Ads. And FB doesn't really like that advertisers creep out their audience, even though they can. I assume it's the reason behind their policy that you can't call out personal attributes. E.g. you can't say "Hey hetereosexual white person! Click here", but you have to write it as "Here's a fun website for hetereosexual white people". I just double checked the policies and using a first name in the ad is actually not allowed, BUT I think you can get around that by having a general ad like "Cool name t-shirts" and then the image happens to have "Peter" printed on the t-shirt. Source: https://transparency.fb.com/policies/ad-standards/objectionable-content/personal-attributes https://transparency.fb.com/policies/ad-standards/objectiona...
- petercooper 4y ago
  It was the (popular) last name in this case. I don't know if that makes any difference. Glad that someone with almost certainly more knowledge thinks it might be viable though. I'm a total FB advertising novice so I'm aware of the options, but not so aware of how it works in practice ;-)

aczerepinski 4y ago

I similarly have not had success defining most targets I want. It says “click here for advanced targeting” but that 404s.

dalys 4y ago

I think that might be hard even if there was a specific target that was "People who work at surfing schools" because people don't really keep their FB job description up to date. I would just target "Surfboard (sporting goods)", "Surfing (water sport)" and similar and then let the FB algorithm do it's magic. I.e. create a very broad targeting for your ad and then let the ad run for a while and get results, and those results will let FB automatically fine tune the targeting for you. It costs some money but it will probably be better in the end. Unofficial rumours says you need around 50 conversion events on ad for the ad to be fully "trained", which can mean a couple of hundred dollars. Remember the targets you add have a OR function between them, unless you use the "Narrow audience" button in the targeting. If you really want to narrow down you could do "Surfing (water sport)" and narrow the audience and find some interest that is AND <insert teaching-related interest targeting>. People that work as surf school teachers could possibly have been identified by FB with some kind of teaching-interest.