Targeted Ads

Why Yes, Facebook! I do want to meet single "environmentally-conscious men". How did you know? Was it by the way that I'm female, single, in my 20s and follow lots of "green" pages?

In other (related) news: I watch 95% of my TV on hulu.com. Despite the fact that they no longer have the Daily Show or the Colbert Report and that their ads have increased in both frequency and length, I think they are pretty fantastic. Until about a month ago...

Hulu played this ad about HPV. It starts with a story about a girl that meets a guy and falls in love and gets married until...(queue eerie music) her doctor tells her that she has HPV and her life is ruined forever! Because she get cancer and then can't have kids and, and, and... it's terrible. It's a minute long (not hulu's usual 30-sec) and it just makes you fell like a horrible person when it's done. I kept seeing this ad day after day and wanted to scream each time it appeared again.

I finally got rid of this dreadful ad by switching my gender on my profile. Yes, I'm now a boy. Get excited. What have I learned from all this? Apparently boys like beer, fast cars, violent video games, and cool cell phones! And girls like NGOs, disney cruises, shampoo, cooking and of course--STDs! I couldn't find the original ad but here's a pretty hilarious parody that came out of it:



If we target ads based on gender is this the result?

Dear Hulu, Please stop these terrible, fearful ads.