Facebook is working towards targeted advertising that's less personal

Facebook is always walking a very fine line between privacy and targeted advertisement. In its latest effort to make this targeted advertising more palatable, the company has started testing out features that will let you fine-tune your ad experience. Speaking to The Advertising Age,  Facebook’s VP of Core Ads explains that the company’s first test lets some users disable ads related to alcohol and parenting. Putting a sentimental spin on it, Mark Rabkin, the VP in question, said that it’s upsetting for families who lost a child to see ads about parenting and “baby stuff.” Other changes include tweaks to the ad preferences page to make it easier to navigate. The earnings of companies like Facebook and Google are dependent on advertising revenues and it’s in their interest to show people ads, and more importantly, to show ads that are relevant. To do this, these companies collect, track and analyse a vast amount of personal information (they claim that efforts are made to keep this information anonymous). A side-effect of this tracking is that sometimes, the ads can be in poor taste, intrusive or unwanted. Google and Facebook do give you the option mark ads that you never want to see again, but this is the first time users are being given the option to opt-out of an entire category of advertising altogether.