So, Facebook's display ads use demographic targeting based on all the information you give them - age, gender, marital status, etc. That's totally fine, and when my status was "engaged" I got a bunch of wedding-planning ads - unsurprising. My husband Dave said he saw the same thing.
Now that my status has changed to "married", though, I'm being targeted with ads for pampers and custom bracelets with your kids' names on them. Ew! I'm guessing that my age (30), marital status and gender are what's triggering these types of ads. Funnily enough, Dave's Facebook profile isn't showing him the same sorts of ads at all - he's seeing ads for clothing. And then you wonder why equal parenting - splitting the childcare responsibility evenly between parents - isn't as simple as it sounds ... you've got this whole shitty cultural system telling you in a bunch of different ways that women = responsible for kids = supposed to want kids. Also, of course, that marriage = children. No wonder women and men absorb these messages - advertising is just an obvious manifestation of the phenomenon.
This has another dimension for me personally, which is that I write and run some ads which could potentially appear on Facebook. Not the ads I've been talking about - I'm not currently handling any display advertising or working with demographically targeted ads, but I do advertise with MSN, and MSN has a deal with Facebook for advertising. So here I am, ranting from inside the belly of the beast. Ah, sweet ironies of life.
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I'm really glad you mentioned this. The ads on my page are always for nursing job sites or crack-pot diet schemes. "17 day juice fast!" "The secret diet the STARS use!" Now, my profile explicitly says I'm in nursing school so I can see where that one comes from. But while, sure, I'm fat and I'll admit it in person - I couldn't figure out how the Facebook ad people knew! Are they looking at my pictures? Are my friends saying stuff about me I haven't seen? I certainly don't describe myself that way on my page. But I think you're right and it's less personal than I've thought. I bet they're assuming that as a woman of 36 I MUST think I need to lose weight. Regardless of what shape I'm really in. Because don't ALL women think they're fat? Especially 36 year old SINGLE women! Gah. Creepy. Not quite as creepy as the thought of faceless ad men looking through my pictures, but creepy none the less.
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