Dark Ads on facebook?

Dark posts, that sounds dangerous, manipulative and highly illegal. But, dark posts do not really exist. Dark posts is an expression that was falsely coined, most likely by the media.

Dark posts have been mixed up with what would more accurately be called Dark Ads, and what we in data-driven marketing call optimized advertising on Facebook. To do relevant ads towards a smaller audience at the right time. – Fish Where the Fish are!

What are a dark ad on facebook?

Dark ads are simply ads on Facebook. Like all ads, the advertiser can be in full control of who sees the ad and it will never be published in a feed. It may come as a form of status update, shared link, image or video not shared as a post on a page, but only published as an ad on the Facebook feeds of the target audience. You’ve probably been there with the same advertisement used to advertise those nice pants you’ve seen from Na-Kd and which I re-advertise to the people reading this post.

Communication on Facebook needs to be relevant

Communication on Facebook is highly based on so-called dark posts. I think it is an inevitable fact that, when communicating in a sharper, more relevant and increasingly communicative manner, dark posts enables a sender of a message to not entirely rely on the speech and image language chosen is right for that particular user, but allows customization of a message in as many ways as you need to get the desired result.

Parties should study “Project Alamo carefully”. Maybe even copy parts of it. But the tactics of actively making people choose the sofa instead of a political party should remain on the other side of the Atlantic.