I was on Facebook today, just checking things out when I noticed this ad on the left side bar.

Since Facebook has been in the news lately for their advertising platform, I have been watching for any changes that I see. This ad had the picture and name for a friend of mine, kind of like a “referral” type ad or “your friend did it, you should too!” type of thing. It wasn’t for a product, rather an application. Either way, I’m sure they were paying for the space. I also had another one of these ads show up in my news feeds but it was for Blockbuster. I should have gotten the screen shot, but I didn’t.

It would be interesting to see if people like these ads more, or if they are getting better “clicks”. Depending on the application, I guess I would be more tempted to go along with it and at least check the application out. The one that was in my news feeds looked like it was using Facebook’s Beacon ad platform.

Anyone find any good examples of these?

I’m kind of offended by Facebook’s “Ad Targeting”. Here is the picture I got from my profile. First, my religion is Mormon, political views are Conservative…so, how on earth is this suppose to target me?! Also, I don’t have anything in my profile that would make them think that this is an appropriate ad for me.

Is Facebook actually targeting these ads, because I hope for their sake they aren’t! The Facebook Flyers seem to be closer on target but they seem to still be just targeting by demographic information.

I think behavioral ad targeting and other ad targeting is going to be really huge. By this picture though, it’s going to be some time before they accurately target the ads.

I got home from work today and I got back on my computer to mess around. While I was sitting in the kitchen, my dad got home and turned on the TV. The Dr. Phil Show was on…not exactly the show I would have picked. He had Kyla Ebbert on his show today. She is suing Southwest Airlines for making her change clothes to get on her flight. I think its pretty ridiculous of them but that’s not the point of this. Here is a video from YouTube:

Now…the real purpose of this article! During the show, Dr. Phil had a representative for a competing airline on the show, Virgin Airlines. *clap* *clap* *clap* *clap* What a marvelous display of taking someone’s bad PR and turning it into good PR for themselves! This representative gave free tickets to Kyla AND wants her to be on an inaugural flight of theirs coming up.

But wait a minute! Thats not all!

Then…that slick Richard Branson’s and his Virgin Airlines gave tickets to the WHOLE audience! WHOA! Talk about good PR and a slap in the face to Southwest Airlines!

I wonder how much they paid Dr. Phil for this??