Facebook Advertising Algorithm: How Do FB Ads Work?
Have you ever talked about something to a friend or family member and then seen ads about the exact same thing on Facebook and Instagram? In this video, we'll explore how the Facebook ads algorithm knows what you want BEFORE you even know you want it.
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0:00 - Is Facebook listening to you?
0:41 - A real-life test by a cybersecurity company
1:15 - How Facebook’s algorithm really works
2:19 - Ai & Big Data Example
4:04 - Other companies also using this technology
5:15 - Conclusion
Now of course Facebook denies that it listens to you or reads what you type on messaging apps like Whatsapp, but still, a lot of people think Facebook are lying and they are listening to what you say or reading what you type.
Interestingly a cyber security company in the UK tested this in 2020 by buying two brand new iPhones and two new Samsung Android phones.
Then opened the Facebook app and kept two phones in silence and the other two were played a series of pet food adverts over 3 days.
The results found no technical evidence of listening and no related ads.
So the results indicate it doesnt look like your phone IS listening to you...
So the big question is... how does Facebook show you ads about things you talk about? And.... In some case.. Show you ads about things you only think about...?
It all comes down to using a combination of big data and Ai.
Here's how it works...
Facebook tracks millions of data points on each of it's users including what websites you visit and what apps you use on your phone.
Based on these data points it creates different interests for each of it's users which you can use to Target people when advertising on Facebook ads.
And now this is where things get interesting...
(When you crate an ad, Facebook reads the text on the ad and can even understand what you're image or video is about. )
As Facebook shows ads to different people on Facebook, Instagram and other Facebook owned properties that match its interest targeting, it starts to look for patterns in behaviors with people that chick on the ad and convert.
For example, let's imagine Jill is pregnant and starts looking for baby clothes online. She sees an ad about baby clothes, clicks on it and buys something. Facebook knows that this person converted for an ad about baby clothes.
What Facebook next does is it looks at Jills behavior BEFORE she showed any interest in baby clothes. For example, maybe she was looking at parenting books or maybe even earlier she was reading blogs on the best locations to live when raising children. Facebook looks at all data points of that person's past behavior and then finds other people that are doing the same kinds of things. Then it shows those other people the same ads that converted with Jill. And Facebook will sometimes show these ads to people BEFORE they even search for baby clothes since their past behaviour indicates they will be interested in baby clothes. So this is why someone might talk about baby clothes and not search for anything and then see ads about baby clothes and think that Facebook or their phone is listening to what they say.
So does that make sense? Can you see how Facebook know what you want sometimes BEFORE you even know you want it?
And it's not just Facebook that combined big data with Ai to predict what you want.
All major companies including Google and Amazon do the same thing of thing.
In fact, theres a story on Forbes (https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirh...) where the store Target figured out a teen girl was pregnant before her father did. Her dad got annoyed at Target for sending her coupons for baby clothes and cribs.
So how did Target know this person was pregnant? Again, target was looking at the buying behavior of previous people who were pregnant and it matched the buying behavior of the girl too.
In the end, Target didn't want to creep people out, so they started mixing their personalized coupons with other random coupon's they knew the person would NOT be interested in so that it LOOKED like the products were all chosen by chance instead of through targeted ads.
So with all that in mind it is perfectly possible for people to see targeted ads without the your phone secretly sitting on you. That being said, Facebook have lied about things in the past such as when they said WhatsApp wouldn't share any of your data with Facebook, but they did. So what do you think? Is Facebook listening? Or are the highly targeted ads you see a result of advanced Ai combined with big data?