Subvertising on Facebook!

Today, I belatedly discovered an interesting project that my Facebook friend Corinna posted a link to a couple of days ago. Basically, Teresa of Teresacentric.com got so sick of complaining about the endless “self-serve” ads for weight loss products on Facebook that she decided to buy some ads to put out her own series of messages.

Like Teresa, I have to say I too am extremely irritated by the increase in targeted adverts on Facebook and find it hard to believe that they are even effective because, as a matter of principle, I would never respond to any of them (even if I wanted to lose weight). The personalisation inherent in these campaigns seems to be rooted in the idea that quoting a person’s age, alongside prompting her to wonder if maybe she could lose some weight, will give her a warm glow that is bound to lead her to hurriedly click that mouse so she can buy products from this wonderful company that has gone to such trouble to reach out to so many women of the same age at the same time. Because all chicks want to lose weight right?

I reckon Teresa’s idea is fantastic and particularly love the ad pictured above. I really hope the idea catches on (we’re certainly considering giving it a go here at the F-word!) and the only criticism I have is that, as far as I can tell from what Teresa says on her blog, only one group has been targeted: single women aged 18-30. Still, I can appreciate that Teresa is paying for the ads out of her own pocket and that covering all the groups who potentially get targeted with this trash would potentially be a bit much for just one person.

So if you can spare a few quid and a few moments, get subvertising!