... to ask how Facebook selects adds (and OMGYES)

[MargieMo]

Does anyone know/understand how Facebook decides which adds are shown? I'm not a regular user, but have been using the app to keep in contact with some extended friends.

On my PC I kept seeing add for OMGYES which I'd never heard of (but I did click the link). Now I get that same add in Facebook on my phone regularly.

ops, meant ad (advertisement) not add :)

I started getting ads for wigs a while ago. No idea why. I have never expressed any interest in getting a wig. Nobody close to me is in need a wig. Very odd. I'll have to google omgyes! Will I regret that?! Will it be popping up in my feed now?

You can turn off personalised ads on Facebook. You need to go to your settings..

It will be an algorithm based on what you click on, pages you like etc. It’s not always accurate though and can go a bit left field. You can adjust your preferences on settings and ‘hide’ ads which annoy you and stop them repeating. I hide loads!!

Hi, I regularly run ad campaigns on Facebook. When I'm setting up an ad I choose who to show it to based on a number of targeting criteria, these include:

• Location (country, city, radius around a postcode)
• Age
• Gender
• Then I can select broad interests, such as eg 'pets' 'cats' 'veterinary services' 'animal welfare' 'vegan' 'healthy recipes'
• And I can select people who either like OR do not like specific pages that exist on Facebook, eg I could select people who like 'pets at home' 'RSPCA' 'Felix cat food' 'siamese cat lovers uk' 'cute kitty pics' 'funny animal videos'
• I can also input the email addresses from my mailing list, and Facebook will cross check to see if those addresses have Facebook accounts. I can then opt to include or exclude these accounts from my ad campaign.
• using the same email data I can also ask Facebook to create a lookalike audience, by finding accounts that look similar in demographic to the people on my existing list, and choose to include those lookalikes in my ad campaign (it's important to be clear here that I have no idea who any of these accounts are, at no time do I, the advertiser, see who any of these targeted people are. It's all done by machine, and I can just see that my ad has reached X amount of people)

So, following all of that, if I were to run a campaign for a vegan cat food recipe book, you might think 'why the hell am I seeing this ad? I don't have a cat, I'm not vegan and I hate cooking' ....but perhaps you liked the funny cat videos page, or perhaps Facebook has just decided you (on paper) look like a similar profile to someone else who does like that stuff.

So it's quite random and also not random at all, if you see what I mean?

Sorry that's long, but I thought it might be interesting to know what advertisers can and can't see and do.

What Icedlatte said. A lot of it will just be broadly demographical,especially for OMGYes. It's probably 90% that you're female and in a certain age bracket

Thanks @Icedlatte , it is really interesting to have some insight as to what is happening behind the scenes.

In this case the ad was successful I guess since I did click the link, and then had a much closer look at OMGYes ... It is certainly interesting, I was not aware of it before ... but not sure I'll pay the price when I'm not sure about the quality/service.

Open the photo. Follow the instructions. This is related to your question. Very very worrying.