I love it, particularly the statement "Facebook should stop treating ads like they are dirty things that must be manipulated and integrated unwittingly into the Facebook experience." Totally agree. Pinterest succeeds because it is a form of content discovery. Aggregators work toward the same purpose. If I knew that FB could truly target ads to my specific situation, you bet I would be curious to look at them. Who doesn't want to find new, compelling content all the time?
I believe whoever wins the content discovery game wins the next decade. Google+ is the only one I see trying to make strides in this area, but they simply don't have the active user base to back it up. FB has the userbase, it just needs to capitalize on it. Doing so would mean a very big win for the small business sector too; for once, ads would actually engage the user and probably convert to a sale more readily.
More than ads, FB needs to provide tools to content producers, businesses, pages that enable them to capitalize on such opportunities. How difficult would it be to say, "We found that 17-23 year olds whose parents like Tom Petty are 67% more likely to like your brand. Would you like to create a targeted ad for this group?" They already have the data. Businesses would easily pay for that kind of functionality.
I really do think that a StumbleUpon for ads would be great. People willingly tell SU what they like and don't like (which is what Facebook and Google are doing, but without explicit, up-front, opt-in consent). SU has millions of users, including me.
By telling them what content I want to see and what I don't want to see, I'm pretty happy knowing that I'm seeing exactly what I told them I wanted to see. Advertisers could do a lot in this space, and it sounds exactly like what you described.
How great would it be if Stumble Upon was pre-seeded with a ton of content automatically mined from your online behavior.
Manually curating a relevant stream of content requires alot of energy and effort. Right now, Facebook is the easiest, lowest effort source of content.
I imagine most Hacker News readers are pretty advanced when it comes to content discovery. But the average user is not as savy. By giving them a few tools, and a clear rules about how their behavior on facebook, (liking, sharing, reading, viewing, etc) contributes to the ads they are served, it could actually become a great resource that they pay attention to
The best forms of advertising don't give a user what he is already looking for, they give him what he doesn't know he needs. By manually curating what ads you like, chances are you'll miss stuff that is actually relevant. I'm a developer, but I have no desire to "learn javascript", because I know it already. Someone who is really into vintage cars will ignore car ads all the time; they have an existing network of sources and information and aren't as interested in changing that unless the story is very compelling.
Contrast that with the idea that FB knows about a 55-year old man that makes ~90k and has few hobbies, but has recently started reconnecting with all his buddies from high school; that type of person is now a profile for someone in whom an advertiser might create a NEW interest for vintage cars. The best part is you don't have to use forensic psychologists to create these profiles; simple statistics would be enough.
Exactly! Facebook already knows everything about you (if you're using it right). They pre-populate what they think you'd like, and you can fine-tune it manually.
It might even lead to more engaging ads, and a new market for companies who can't figure out how to create gripping ads on Facebook at the moment.
The way I see it: FB is scrambling to create new ways for companies to advertise. (e.g. Facebook Logout Ads, "like" a page for Subway commercial outtakes with Blake Griffin). How do you motivate a user who only wants to check out their friend's status to buy Tide or learn javascript? This is a solid idea that FB should notice.
It's hard to think that a user will willfully submit themselves to a page of ads, but I think this might be a good solution. Ads have definitely become smarter in reaching their audience. Seems like companies are finally beginning to understand the creativity needed to get user attention. If you're able to SU through ads that are hyper-targeted, you may see stuff that actually matters to you.
