Facebook’s Ad Targeting is Under Investigation

An article on AdWeek titled Facebook’s Ad Targeting Is Under Scrutiny About Whether It Allows Discrimination focus on Facebook’s ad targeting preferences and the options that brands can select when targeting ads to specific audiences. I find it extremely interesting because Facebook is used to target so many people based off location and even based off what you search. Facebook has an ad targeting option called “ethnic affinity” where the publication reports advertisers can choose to exclude users with specific races from seeing ads. ProPublica suggested that its illegal is discriminate ads based on ethnicity alone. It’s important to note when brands target ads toward specific audiences it’s not necessarily discriminating because they have a specific audience in mind. Christian Martinez, Facebook’s head of multicultural responded with, “That merchant also many want to exclude other ethnicities for whom their care products are not relevant- this is a process known in the ad industry as “exclusion targeting”. This prevents audiences for the community-specific ads from seeing a generic ad targeted to a large group and helps avoid offensive outcome that traditional advertising can often create for people in the minority (AdWeek Johnson).” For instance, I wouldn’t want to see hair products designed for black women on my news feed. I already get bombarded with ads consistently so if it’s irrelevant to me specifically I would rather the ad not be targeted toward me. This can go for any product of service. The reason I deem this article so important is because social media, specifically Facebook, has become a huge platform for advertising and I think we will be seeing more articles along the lines of this one.