A day in Facebook Ads

I, like most people who've spent more than six minutes on the internet, have been trained to ignore anything that shows up in the far right column of a web page.  It's only ads any more.  But recently I've been intrigued by the ads that Facebook is choosing for me.  So I captured a sampling of ads that Facebook gave me today.

This is the one that got me started.  Apparently, it's telling me that if I am a father and make very little money, I can have hot, overly-made-up chicks smiling at me in provocative ways.  Presumably, this is what a scholarship will do for me.  But wait, this appears to be a correspondence or online degree.  This is the internet.  I don't need to take online classes to find hot, overly-made-up chicks smiling at me in provocative ways on the internet.  In fact, it's almost difficult to avoid that kind of thing.  (Be careful what links you click, folks.)

Aaaah!  Now they're telling me I can become the Unabomber if only I sign up for their online scholarship thing.  Is this dude a dad?  I can pretty much guarantee he doesn't bring home more than $45 grand, unless it's in the sack that he filled in the bank vault with his ski mask on.

Yeah, now that's more like it.  Forget scholarships.  Who needs school when you can have pecs and delts like that guy?  And all I have to do is drink whatever he's got in the bottle.  And I can be a UFC champion.  That's definitely worth a click.

This one definitely got my attention because I am certain that Wells Fargo did not make, buy, or approve this ad.  I'm guessing, though I'm not sure, that if you click this it will take you to the scholarships for dads site.  This one makes me a little queasy because it implies that I and my coworkers aren't already educated.  I do, however, like the gratuitous hyphen in re-imbursement.  This is a school I want to attend.  One that puts random punctuation where it's not needed, to clarify something that does not need clarification.

At least the Author's Guide is free.  At least it openly refers to self publishing and doesn't do those underhanded vanity publisher tricks, at least not at the start.  But really, does anyone believe that if you self publish your poetry, you will "get discovered by traditional publishers"?  That's like saying, "join Twitter and you'll get discovered by traditional publishers!"  I really hate products that prey on people's dreams with no actual hope of fulfilling them.

This one just has me befuddled.  There's an "average Team USA mom"?  At first I thought this was an ad for custom sports apparel.  Then I thought it was an ad for... um, something Olympic.  Then I saw it as a P&G ad.  More like a WTF ad.  What are they trying to sell me here?  Pringles?  Does P&G make Pringles?  Oh, I guess so.  I'll put this one down to a cute but ultimately stupid attempt at Olympics related nerd humor.  Moms, nerd humor, and Olympics--trying to hit a trifecta but coming in just outside of medal contention.

There were other ads, too, but these came up most often (apart from the Facebook feature ads).  I don't have any particular point in this blog post except to say that, yeah, now that I've paid attention, I fully understand how easy it was to train myself to ignore that right column on web sites.