"That's the power of intent and Facebook doesn't have that."
Sure they do...
Status Update from malandrew's mom: "OMG I can't wait to watch the new episode of The Good Wife tonight!"
Facebook ads: "Click here to watch The latest Episode of the Good Wife"
Facebook could has something better than Google intent in that they should be able to predict what you intend to search for before you go looking for it.
When you want to search something, do you first go to your facebook account and tell your friends "hey, I want to learn more about x!" and then go to your favorite search engine, and actually do your search?
I bet you don't.
In your example, if the mom is saying "tonight", it probably means that she wants to see it "tonight" (maybe she doesn't have the time right now). so, they should try to make the ad really visible that very night, so the user (this mum) will see it before she even goes to look for it anywhere else.
But that would feel very creepy. She would think "how did they knew I wanted that?". It would feel like if someone is spying her. I think the average people is ok to have ads displayed while searching (maybe they will not even notice that some "results" are ads). But when the ads start having a very direct relation to what people posts, they start to worry about their privacy.
What I mean is... sure, facebook could infer the user intention, but in comparison, a search engine has it almost served.
I think retargeting is really only creepy for people like us who are smart enough to link the retargeting back to our identity because we are logged into google.
My mom (again) is subjected to retargeting, but she doesn't identify it as tied to her identity so much as tied to the current search. She uses gmail for work and her personal account (because i set up a google apps account for her), but I doubt she knows that just because she's logged into gmail that google search is tying that information back to her identity.
This is a far cry from Facebook where people know that things in Facebook are tied back to their identity, and not only that is tied back to their identity in a way that may be visible to friends and family.
Both Google and Facebook track you, but Facebook is personal, and people are aware of that fact.
It is a successful tool for ad networks to provide because advertisers pay more for it, I've yet to be convinced that it actually increases conversions. If I keep seeing an ad over and over again, I just get annoyed.
I've seen the number, it converts far, far better than average ads. On the order of 10X, for the campaigns I've seen. That's partially because clickthrough rates overall keep dropping, but still, they're really effective.
Yes, it's annoying if you're in the 95% of customers who won't actually convert. But it only has to be effective about 1 out of 20 times to be a huge improvement (and that 1 might even be you, but you're mostly annoyed by the other 19 times.)
Most people on Facebook talk about what HAS happened, even if it's just happened on their minds. Their intent is already elsewhere. In your example, that person has mentally scheduled to watch it tonight. If she wanted to watch it earlier, she would be googling it right after posting that to FB.
If FB decides to infer intent from posts right away (when the post's content could be relevant to intent) and adopt a role of 'online assistant' with automatic instant suggestions, that will be creepy and, considering the amount of colorful emotions often present in FB posts, is sure going to cause a few interesting situations. But that's a hugely different product from the Facebook and the ad industry as we know it.
Facebook could has something better than Google intent in that they should be able to predict what you intend to search for before you go looking for it.
You could say that Google responds to your demand while Facebook (at least in potential) creates new demands.
If we're still going with the given example, Facebook didn't create anything except a forum where a mom posted a status update.
There's no reason for an advertiser to pay to serve an ad for that. The ad was just given away for free. Unless you want to watch the show right at that moment, you wouldn't click it anyway.
So, I'm missing the part where Facebook can monetize the "new demands."
I was going with the example of Facebook using their knowledge my tastes, as well as the tastes of millions of people who are somewhat like me, to introduce me to things that I would have a legitimate interest in, even if I'm not searching for them.
Example: Subject is a coffee-drinking, Vespa-riding, snappy-dressing, backyard chicken-farming, photo-snapping, game-playing father of two small children. He's not looking for bluetooth cuff links, but we know that once he sees them, he'll be likely to buy because that's what other people in his micro-niche tend to buy.
Sure they do...
Status Update from malandrew's mom: "OMG I can't wait to watch the new episode of The Good Wife tonight!"
Facebook ads: "Click here to watch The latest Episode of the Good Wife"
Facebook could has something better than Google intent in that they should be able to predict what you intend to search for before you go looking for it.