How Social Media ads target you

Joe Collins

joec3754@gmail.com

 

Have you ever been shopping online or reading about your favorite musical artist? Then you switch over to Instagram or TikTok and an add pops up about some new shoes for a low price or to buy tickets for Rolling Loud in Miami Florida? Well it's actually pretty common. Social Media websites like Facebook and Twitter monitor your search history or likes and then send you ads related to that topic. For example, I can't tell you how many times I've seen an ad on Instagram about the same led lights for your car with the caption "Rides with the squad about to be lit!" That's just social media targeting you with its advertisements. 

Picture source: iTechCode. 

Most of that can be attributed to social media sites now having access to information about their target audience.  Facebook was one of the first social media apps to start using this information and now uses advertisements the most out of all of the social media apps. One of the most common demographics they look at when deciding what advertisements to show their users is age. For example, a young person is more likely to look at things relating to music, clothes, things for their room/dorm etc. 

 

For an adult, they are more likely to get ads about something like elections or vacation spots. Of course there's others like if they're in a relationship, you'll see ads for gifts to buy for your significant other or if they are looking at celebrities jewelry, it'll show you an ad about getting a gold chain or watch. It seems social media seems to know more about me than I do. 

I kind of have an odd feeling about it. On one hand I think it's very creepy that social media is stalking me and finding out what I read about on the internet. On the other, it has been very helpful in the past because it leads me to finding out more about topics I'm interested in and then I can make a purchase.

Another app that also likes to know about you is TikTok. I've used TikTok for almost 4 months now and it has quickly become my favorite app to use. It literally has so much content and there's always a new video going up literally every second. However, I'm afraid how TikTok target you. For example, to get a lot of likes comments, you usually leave a #fyp or #foryoupage in your caption in order to reach for people. The creepy thing is, the stuff that sometimes ends up on your for you page, is really for you like when it says "Oh look at that, you should be doing your homework right now."

Sites like TikTok have access to a lot of your search information and thus try to make the experience as close as possible to your likes and interests.