Let’s get it out of the way – the largest social media platform on planet Earth, Facebook, has faced considerable backlash from former account holders, stock market investors, Congresspeople in the United States Federal Government’s interrogation of CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and found itself at the butt end of jokes both delivered in and outside of meme format.
Why? Because it, pretty much, gets its proverbial hands on as much personal information of both Facebook users’ and people without any social media pages in hopes – more like success – of even further increasing its annual income statement’s numbers.
Facebook makes money through just one primary means, much like search engine giant Google – and that avenue is through digital advertising. It also brings in money through partnerships with content creators that, in turn, have their live content – it’s broadcasted through Facebook Live – promoted to targeted individuals around the world, and last, but surely not least, is selling data.
However, given the fact that Facebook has faced so much flak recently regarding its loosely-held data policies, not much information will be available about such data-vending endeavors – especially not from Facebook’s official annual financial statements, which indicated a whopping gross revenue of $40,653,000,000 – that’s just short of $41 billion – from which just $5,454,000,000 was deducted as cost of revenue – in other words, that’s how much money Facebook spent on its endeavors to generate business interest – also known as, making money.
So, what’s new with Facebook and its high-powered digital advertising infrastructure? Facebook’s entire digital marketing structure could soon be uprooted in the name of replacing it with a .50-caliber feature that will target individuals, both with and without Facebook accounts, precisely using the data its users agree to have harvested from them.
Here’s what the potential new advertising system has under the proverbial hood
While targeted advertisements‘ existence is far from groundbreaking news, Facebook’s researchers and developers are improving its abilities to predict user behavior.
How’s that?
Just like everybody on planet Earth is unique, we all engage in different behaviors. When it comes to Facebook, some people might tend to use Messenger, browse through funny videos, or (insert social media browsing behavior here) more than others.
According to The Intercept, Facebook “can comb through its entire user base … and produce millions … who are ‘at risk’ of jumping ship from one brand to a competitor.”
Kinda creepy, so we should ALL stop using Fa… hey, my selfie just got 100 likes!
Dil Bole Oberoi
