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."

Comments

Re:What about ladyboys/shemales?

[jawtheshark]

Why would anyone be against shemales? They know best how to give head while at least superficially looking like females ;-)

Wait, wait, let me get this right

[Rogerborg]

Paul Francis, uh, "scientific" director of the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, has figured out that if I choose to declare that I'm gay on my public Failbook profile, then people can use that information to determine my sexuality?

Whoa, that's some cutting edge research there. Thanks for looking out for me, Paul.

Because they're fabulous?

[Hatta]

Page 3 before gay men are even mentioned and that's the headline? I'm not even going to bother making an on topic post.

The math is simple

[onyxruby]

The gay's tend not to have kids. That means that they have more discretionary income. More discretionary income equates to more readily purchasing more expensive toys more often than the guy that supports a family. It's why you see shiny things like the latest Itoy so often in the hands of gay people, they can afford them. It's just math and the logic is sound.

The second part though, the idea that someone would go to all the trouble to use something like this to track down a bunch of gays is absurd. Why bother doing that when if your a nutter you just go to your local gay bar instead? You know the one that advertises to attract all of those gays?

Re:The math is simple

[timeOday]

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.

Don't want to be targeted?

[dealmaster00]

Don't want to be targeted? Don't use Facebook.

Re:Don't want to be targeted?

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Don't want to be targeted? Don't use Facebook

and don't live in a town called Dorking.

Re:What about ladyboys/shemales?

[TheRaven64]

Everybody looks down on someone. I try to be egalitarian and look down on all of you equally.