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Why Gay Men Are Worth So Much To Facebook
Barence writes "PC Pro has a feature on how social networks sold your privacy, which includes some interesting comparisons on the value of different demographics to Facebook. For example, an advert that targets everyone within a 10-mile radius of a medium-sized British town (Dorking) is valued at 28p per click by Facebook's advertising tool. However, targeting single gay men in the area with a preference for nightclubbing raises the price to 71p per click — 2.5x the price of targeting the general public. Such precise targeting also raises other issues. Whittling down ads to target such precise demographics can result in ads targeting as few as 20 people, making it theoretically possible to identify those targeted. 'I think the worst scenario might be where someone who hates gays uses Facebook's targeting to identify gay users and later attack them,' says Paul Francis, scientific director of the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems."
For example, an advert that targets everyone within a 10-mile radius of a medium-sized British town (Dorking) is valued at 28p per click by Facebook's advertising tool. However, targeting single gay men in the area with a preference for nightclubbing raises the price to 71p per click
That typically means young and single, which has always been a very attractive market with a lot of disposable time and money. Can we get a comparison to straight people with a preference to nightclubbing? Of course a blanket ad trying to sell to everyone is worth far far less...
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Why? We knew that already. It's posted every single time there's a story on Facebook.
Yes, women newly pregnant for the first time are highly desirable and targeted demographic. That link describes the lengths Target goes to in order to identify those women, even if they haven't told anybody yet (on facebook or otherwise). But after the spike of one-time purchases and brand adoption during the pregnancy, most of the purchases for actually raising a child are recurring and made from habit, so advertising is less effective.
Actually you missed the most important part - after the spike of one-time purchases during the pregnancy, most purchases for actually raising a child are made from habits that can be influenced during the pregnancy.
That's why advertising to newly pregnant women is so profitable; if you pull it off properly, you might have a customer who will now buy things from you for the next eighteen years - and then that child will have memories of shopping at Target, and refuse to shop anywhere else (e.g, my wife absolutely refuses to shop at K-Mart and will drive further to go to a Target, just because that's where her mother shopped when she was a kid).
Actually, most of the trans people I know don't have a problem with drag/ladyboys.... "shemales" is a different story... that's offensive because it's specifically tied to sexual fetishism, but drag and ladyboys are performance. Transsexualism isn't performance, it's real, and outside of people who are just beginning their "real life experience" period, I don't know any trans people who have a problem with the idea of drag. They don't like to be identified as it (because they aren't), but they can accept it as a different concept.
That being said, there's a whole lot more to "transgendered" than transsexualism. Genderqueer, people who simply refuse to associate with either specific gender, androgynous culture, etc., all fit within the umbrella term.
And yes, I do know several transgendered individuals, some of whom are also transsexual. It comes from my volunteer work with the local queer community center.
Also worth noting... historically treatment for transgender issues was restricted by a (now debunked) theory that very narrowly defined what could be accepted as "trans". That created an inaccurate skew in terms of the sexuality... in Canada, for example, until the last couple of years it was impossible for somebody who identified as homosexual to get gender reassignment therapy. If you were a transwoman, you, by definition, had to like men exclusively, sexually. That has changed, and a very large number of "gay" trans people have come out of the woodwork and are now seeking therapy. I would expect that when the dust settles it'll be somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of trans people who are homosexual.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gay_Adoption_Map_North_America.svg