At the beginning of this year, Facebook was in the news for all the wrong reasons. The media spotlight was on the company’s perceived misuse of our data and how much of this was for monetary gain. This pressure was then compounded by the Cambridge Analytica scandal that gave us the impression that democratic elections could be swayed with the right combination of cleverly targeted social media ads and messages. Although I do think that influencing an election may be a bit of a stretch, social media no doubt has the power to build awareness among us and influence our consumer decisions both consciously and subconsciously.
These controversies were all happening at a time when GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) was on the horizon meaning that online advertising was about to change. As I spend a large part of my day job setting up social media ad campaigns, I thought it would be interesting to study the types of ads I’m targeted with every day and if these ads would be relevant to me and my interests? I decided to screenshot every ad that appeared on my phone for a week to find out. I also hoped I’d be able to determine the types of companies that are spending big on social media advertising while I was at it.
Firstly, I set out some simple parameters for the test and would base my results strictly off mobile ads I was shown on my personal Facebook and Instagram (also owned by Facebook) accounts. I disregarded my work accounts on these platforms and Snapchat entirely because it’s 97% “HiSmile” teeth whitening ads anyway. The period of this study was from the 26th of March until the 1st of April 2018 and I found that on average I was spending 1.5 hours a day across both apps. That makes up roughly 16 hours worth of social media during the week in question which is not something I’m proud of. Much of this time is actually spent watching random videos, browsing comment sections, reading in app articles and using the messenger app. When I focused solely on newsfeed scrolling, I was seeing roughly one ad every 5 posts on Facebook and one ad every 4 posts on Instagram.
As you may be aware, Facebook advertising allows businesses and brands to show targeted ads to Facebook and Instagram users based off certain factors i.e. interests/friends interests, history on the app, history on other linked apps and search history online. From what I’ve given over to Facebook in this regard, I imagine it’s aware that I'm a 26 year old male, I enjoy content related to sports, travel, memes, tech and video products and I use social media and other office applications every day. The types of pages I follow and engage with on social media include clothing brands, travel pages, publishers, sports teams, influencers etc.
If Facebook (and the marketeers setting up their ads) got their targeting right, then these are primarily the types of ads that I would have seen. By the end of my week I had seen a total of 290 ads across both apps. If you don’t believe that I actually recorded all of these, well I really am that sad and I’ve compiled them in a short video complete with some jazzy music! Enjoy
If you sat through all of the above, then fair play to you because I wouldn’t. When lined up in the order in which they were screenshot, it’s hard to see any sort of trend or pattern to these ads. If you start to categorise them however, you get an idea of which industries are spending the most money on social media advertising and which ones Facebook identifies I am most likely to engage with. Using every ounce of Excel skills I have (not much), I put together a pie chart to represent how many of the 290 ads fell into each category;
You can see from the chart that the big spenders on social media ads are tech companies, travel companies, recruiters (all in this case were linked to my field of work), educational institutions and online retailers. The ad frequency was highest for shopping related websites that I had visited online with one particular H&M sale ad popping up five times before the week was done. The types of ads that fell under “other” were one for hair transplant clinics, some government initiatives and charity fundraisers/events. The real advantage of Facebook over traditional advertising is that if you were to do the same experiment with your own newsfeed, the ads could be almost completely different and tailored specifically to you.
Having spent my life convinced that I’m my own unique person, it turns out that Zuckerberg’s machine was able to build a pretty accurate profile of me as a user and more importantly a potential consumer. So what have I learned from a week spent screenshotting ads other than that I need to put the phone down and get out more? The main thing I have taken away from this is just how powerful social advertising can be at getting a relevant message out to your audience. I was also reminded of the importance of proofreading and spellchecking your ads after this shocker from a company who’s identity I will protect;
Are you looking to set up your social media ads and don’t know where to start? Get in touch with me for a free social media ad campaign proposal that will help you get your message in front of the right people. You can also follow me on Instagram and Facebook.