Facebook Question

[billbenson]

I really have competitor of a friend running ad's on my Facebook page. Is there any way of blocking ads from a certain company?

Mind you I'm quite Facebook and social media illiterate.

[Brian Altenhofel]

If you hover over the ad, you should see a small x in the upper right corner. It gives you four options: "I don't want to see this", "This ad is useful", "Hide all from <company name>", "Why am I seeing this".

[billbenson]

That does it. Thanks

[Harold Mansfield]

To be clear, they aren't running ads on your page specifically. I don't think Facebook ads have that capability. You're likely seeing the ad because you follow a similar page, or are in the demographic that they are targeting, or a combination of both. The only way an advertiser can target you specifically is if you are following them.

Also, if you've gone to their website recently and they are running ads on Facebook, you'll see the ad when you log back on to Facebook.

[billbenson]

I have gone to their Facebook page. I have never posted or like anything there though.

[Brian Altenhofel]

It's not just going to their Facebook page. Facebook has tools for remarketing. The idea behind it is there is a more likely chance of some interest already if you have been to the advertiser's website away from Facebook.

The same sort of thing happens on many e-commerce websites these days. We can take information from your referrer or a tracker placed elsewhere (usually a 1x1 image), combine it with your likely location, compare to data from similar users, and run it through a machine learning algorithm to determine what content to surface to you that you will be most likely to buy. Facebook does the same thing with their ads.

[Harold Mansfield]

I have gone to their Facebook page. I have never posted or like anything there though.
Yep. What Brian just said. This entire thing, the internet, was always about marketing to you. Just like Newspapers, Radio, and Television. Now they pretty much have it perfected. Marketers have more info on you than the NSA. They can track your habits, what you like, where you've been, and what ads to show you and when to show them. It may not always be specifically tied to your name, but it's tied to your user profile, computer, and location.