As a newly married guy with no kids (yet), I have been seeing way too many ads related to babies lately. I realize that the ad targeting options available to advertisers are become more and more robust. However, I’m starting to suspect there is a deep seated and nefarious conspiracy in motion.
I suspect this conspiracy is designed to get young people thinking about having kids, with the goal of boosting the rapidly falling US birth rate (and giving my Mom grandbabies). At least that’s the explanation I prefer to believe.
It all started when YouTube started showing me ads for Pampers. I posted on Facebook to complain, and Facebook started showing me more Pampers ads AND ads about cute babies. You can see for yourself:
On a more serious note, this is a great example of how Facebook does contextual targeting of ads. Presumably the ads shown above are targeting users who like “Pampers” or “babies” and Facebook contextually determined that users reading this thread fit those criteria. You can read more about Facebook’s contextual targeting here.
