I have been slightly wary of the whole targeted ads on Facebook thing – I wasn’t sure how it was going to affect my use of it or whether it would actually work. However, an ad appeared on my home page today which made me stop and thing – wow, that’s clever!

As some of you may no I am engaged to be married, and my Facebook status reflects that. The ad (as you can see) was for weddings abroad. Facebook obviously knows I’m engaged but can’t know that we are actually planning to get married abroad (can it…!?!) but the effectiveness of this ad on the long tail of Facebook engaged users who are thinking about getting married abroad (and I know of at least two other couples who are) must be highly effective. I’d be fascinated to know what the click-through rate is.

Not only is this idea very clever, it’s also exceptionally simple. I saw a video of Facebook’s presentation to the advertising community when they launched this feature – and it’s as simple as providing the image, the link to your site, and then filter the people who you want to see it. In this case – where status = engaged! Must have taken the company under 30 seconds to set this campaign up…

So – what’s Google going to do about it?

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