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Comment by fsflover | Hacker News Reader

> If ads are just restricted to intent based on page/video/query, small advertisers lose out on effectiveness

Any research proving this?

Just quoting FB's wording and my hunch. As the other commenter gave an example, if you have a niche product which only a fraction of people would be ever interested in, it would help if you can know who those are, and restrict targeting to them.

I can search for knitting needles or be viewing a knitting post on Instagram. If an artisan needle seller wants to target his product it doesn't help targeting people who are not interested into artisan stuff. So to maximize the ad budget impact the ads are better left targeted specifically to people who have a higher likelihood of buying artisan stuff. This problem doesn't affect some mass market knitting needle seller.

I'd imagine that the advertiser could only show needle ads next to content about sewing / knitting and be very effective at reaching the desired audience without resorting to collecting PII about that audience.

Any reason this wouldn't work?

As I wrote in my example, this intent based method works for a big advertiser which is making a mass market product; but say someone producing a niche artisan knitting needle which only say 1 in 100 people who are interested in knitting needles will be interested in, would benefit from targeted advertisement. Otherwise, they would end up spending a lot of money on ad space not worth bidding for.

A nitpick, the advertiser is not collecting and getting PII. FB the ad platform, owns and controls that data.

Understood. My suggestion was that Facebook "target" based on the content of the post/article/website. Thus a needle ad is shown next to a kitting post. This can certainly be an artisan needle producer buying 1000 impressions...

Fully understand that Facebook is keep the PII close - that's their differentiation.

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