In the US, online advertising spend has tripled over the past five years, due in part to increased targeting capabilities.  Agencies and client-side advertisers have access to a wide array of tools, which allow them to specifically target their chosen demographics in unprecedented ways.  But every advancement comes with its own hiccups and the question of ethics often surmounts.

What would you do if you knew a certain picture would increase your click-through rates twofold?

Or let’s say you are able to figure out the religion of your targets. Do you use it to your advantage?

Has user targeting become the new pop-up?

When advertisers target too specifically, use weird bearded men in financial ads, or introduce interesting interactivity (such as the “tickle the fat kid” ad) … well… it’s just plain creepy. With the media recently focusing its attention on the quality and legitimacy of search results, will we see more efforts to clean up the internet advertising world?  Or, will it just get more interesting?

And, when we say interesting, we mean…

Zuckerberg struck again on Sunday night, making his second career appearance on one of the top-rated news programs in America, 60 Minutes.  Aside from the onslaught of investigative questions from Lesley Stahl, Zuckerberg found time to introduce Facebook’s User Profile Redesign. The new profile format immediately informs visitors of a profile page who that person is, but this change means that users will be encouraged to provide even more data about themselves. Surprised, right?

This article from Josh Costine goes into depth about the Facebook display changes and how they improve the accuracy of Facebook’s growing data set. Marketers use this data set to target Facebook users who are most interested in the product they are advertising. Key to this ever-growing targeting pool is the newly designed Profile Info Summary. The “Summary” is the first thing that catches your eye on a profile page, as it is right beneath your name and above your most recent photos. It provides a quick rundown of your job, your school, your current location, your relationship status, the languages you speak, your hometown, and your birth date. Costine explains, “It’s therefore in Facebook’s interest for users to provide and keep current this information. Prompts for users to enter absent information and the increased visibility of these fields to a user and their friends should ensure this.” Costine goes on to provide further information regarding the User Profile Redesign. However, no aspect of the New Facebook Profile is more important to marketers than the Info Summary, as it will prompt users to reveal more about themselves.

On a side note, the 60 Minutes interview was very entertaining. You should watch it here if you missed it. Zuckerberg seems as composed and confident as ever. He preaches the growing importance of “social” in every decision that an individual makes, from buying groceries to watching television. He answers all questions as honestly as possible… for him. Which leaves the general public with only one question: Who wins in a fight? Andy Rooney or Mark Zuckerberg? Let the argument begin…

I’ve been a regular user of Facebook since it’s inception in 2004, when it was first marketed amongst collegians as an exclusive social network. When I heard about it from my randomly-assigned freshman roommate, I could barely grasp what she was talking about. “A face? Whose face? A book? What kind of book?” “No, no,” she said, exasperated. “F-A-C-E-B-O-O-K. Dot com!” Over the next four years, my relationship with Facebook mutated more often than Burger King’s marketing campaign; my peers and I generated online personas and expanded our networks exponentially, all under the semblance of control and ownership.

The rate of change in Facebook rivals its rate of integration into our lives. For hours on end, we update, like, share, chat and peruse the profiles of friends, bands, companies…of everything and nothing at all. This behavior makes Facebook the perfect vessel through which companies can reach their audiences. Given the time we spend on Facebook, the nature of what we share and the potential data available to advertisers, privacy is certainly important to users. But how important?

The general consensus is that consumers will continue to “sacrifice” their privacy because they value the experience so much. Maybe Facebook will continue to serve 400 million users because it’s made mistakes and innovations in a way that makes it seem like its growing up with its audience. We believe Facebook is listening and making every effort to protect us. Like parents who thrive on that semblance of control and ownership, millions of users, save for a fraction of outspoken and conscious ones (like, say, 35,000 people), won’t care about Open Graph and its ability to “target you on an even more granular level,” nor the Graph API, which “makes it much easier to parse, collate and thus search through user info.” More specifically, Open Graph allows website URLs to be part of the Facebook universe and advertisers are able to trace and track users who connect to those websites, much like Facebook Pages.

As an avid Facebook user and marketer, the big question after the ruckus dies down about things like “privacy” and “transparency” is whether or not most people care. And not only do I wonder how many people care, but who exactly cares?

We want to hear from you! Do you think a significant amount of users negatively react after companies adapt this new knowledge stream? How will Facebook resolve its liminal stance between connecting users and monetizing their participation?