Advertising Through Social Networks
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/29/business/with-new-ad-platform-facebook-opens-the-gates-to-its-vault-of-consumer-data.html?ref=technology&_r=0
Facebook is one of the biggest social networking sites in the world, currently with 1.3 billion users. In particular, the diverse amount of information and interactions on Facebook give its developers prime access to personal data of its users which is invaluable in the marketing world. Based of traits like someone’s age, gender, location, and hobbies, Facebook can target specific ads to people who would more likely be interested in them. Now they are making this information public, allowing advertising firms worldwide to purchase information to be able to advertise with similar precision.
Someone’s information would serve as a sort of profile for them, creating links to various different areas of interest with varying ranges of preference. This network of interest can be used when surveying something like interest in a certain brand of skater clothing. Such things like location would be key in targeting, but other things like strong ties to pages on Facebook related to skating, music choice, friends, and age can add varying degrees of preference to someone’s potential in liking an ad. By doing something like only advertising to people with a certain level of interest based on these factors, Facebook and now many more advertising companies can advertise on the internet much more efficiently.