Targeting Your Creations with Facebook Advertising
Before Facebook, you had basically one option in advertising on the Web: ads that show up when you search, put there by advertisers that specify given keywords hoping that they'll catch people in the act of searching for something relevant to what they're advertising. (See Figure 15-16.) Advertising companies got really smart at this, and they could produce ads that were quite relevant to the things you were searching for. However, no matter how they tried, they were still guessing, based on your IP address, search activity, and other factors, what ads you might most be interested in. They still didn't know who you were.
Figure 15-16: Google AdWords targeted things and searches based on things, not real people.
When Facebook began making inroads, it brought in a new element to advertising, something perhaps made popular before by Myspace. Facebook made it possible for advertisers to target individuals based on the types of things available in the user's profile, not just an IP address. This way, ads were being generated based on real information about the individual, which the individual was providing — the person's interests, age, gender, and location could all go into a targeted ad.
Facebook took this one step further. Facebook made it possible for any user of its Web site to create ads that target specific demographics and interests ...
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