Late last year, I was bothered by Buick’s awful targeted advertising on Facebook. They wanted me to “like” their brand for a chance to win a trip to New York City, but I already lived in New York City. Awful use of contextual advertising and enough to make me question whether or not marketers understand the true power of Facebook ads. 

It only took 6 months, but yesterday afternoon I experienced a shining example of targeted Facebook advertising being used to its full potential.  I was innocuously perusing my own profile to check if a link I shared was showing up when I noticed an ad for “Devil In The White City.”

For those who don’t know, “Devil In The White City” is a great murder mystery/historical fiction novel by Erik Larson about Chicago around the time of the World’s Fair in 1893. It is also one of my favorite books ever, and is listed as such on my Facebook profile.  The book was released in 2004, so I was surprised to see a Facebook ad for it.  Upon closer inspection, it was actually an ad for a BRAND NEW ErikLarson book that had just come out called “In The Garden Of Beasts”

As I said on Twitter at the time: 

This is the first time I can remember feeling truly thankful for an ad. I really enjoy Larson’s books, but had no idea there was a new one!

The process of discovering new books is overwhelming to me, so I spend very little time reading book reviews, instead depend on word of mouth from friends and family. Unfortunately, I’m the only nerd in my circle of influence who enjoys historical fiction, so “In The Garden Of Beasts” completely flew under my radar. Luckily, Scribd.com effectively used a portion of their advertising budget* on a timely Facebook ad and I found out about the book the day after it was released. I know how I’ll be spending my weekend. 

* Scribd.com seems to be all in on Facebook advertising. Google searches for “Devil In The White City,” “Erik Larson,” and “Erik Larson new book” don’t show any sponsored links similar to the one I experienced on Facebook.  While Facebook ads have way more of an effect on me than Google ads EVER did, I’m surprised that Scribd didn’t save a portion of their ad budget to cover Google as well.  Perhaps they feel that people Googling those terms are more active in their search of Erik Larson books and are so focused on finding editorial content they won’t even pay attention to Google’s ads. Regardless of the exact strategy, their Facebook ad won me over. Kudos. 

Ummmmm… I already live in New York City (and Facebook knows this). I don’t need a trip to here. And by the way, what value does Buick get from me “liking” them just to win a free trip? It doesn’t mean I actually like them.  It means I’m clicking a button to try to win a free trip.  In reality, it is Buick’s way of forcing their social media “outreach” (advertising) into as many news feeds as possible. 

Until recently, I mistakenly thought that the individual relevance of Facebook advertising would be a fundamental improvement over Google display ads.  But based on this Buick example, I’m concerned that Facebook’s targeting is flawed, and that brands still don’t fully understand the value of social media platforms like Facebook.  The idea isn’t to trick random people into “liking” the brand. The value of Facebook (or other social networking sites) is to leverage the power of existing fans of your brand, help them to connect with fellow humans who share their passion, and to cultivate the collective voice of these true brand ambassadors. Buick (and other brands) should be focusing their Facebook outreach on these people, instead of tricking uninterested individuals into clicking a like button just to win a free trip.  

At best, Buick will have gained an inactive “fan” that counts toward their social media metrics. At worst, the new “like” will realize they don’t have any interest in Buick and they’ll “unlike” them (if they can find the unlike button buried deep on the brand Facebook page). 

I don’t mean to pick on Buick, because A LOT of brands do this on Facebook.  This is just a culmination of frustrations with the way Facebook is being used by marketers.