Signal Really Got Under Facebook's Skin With This One

I think we all know that the Facebook Ads platform gives us near-creepy level targeting powers. For the most part though, advertisers are happy to let users believe that the hyper-specific ads that look like they've been created just for them are entirely serendipitous.

The marketing team at Signal had a different idea. The ad above is from a private messaging app company called Signal, and their goal was to call attention to just how intrusive social media ad targeting has become.

Here are a few more from the campaign:

Why didn't you see them in your feed? Because the ads never actually ran.

Signal published a blog post claiming that they attempted to launch the campaign only to have them rejected, and then their account was disabled, presumably because Facebook didn't like how they were exposing the creepiness.

A spokesperson from Facebook has since replied, claiming that the ads never actually ran, and that the whole thing was just a stunt to get attention by Signal.

The drama unfolded in a series of tweets, complete with screenshots and thinly-veiled accusations, but the attention that the whole exchange picked up has made it perfectly clear that people are not happy with the way Facebook is tracking them.

One takeaway from Signal's campaign-that-wasn't is an expert-level case study in David vs Goliath PR. Signal has been able to attract millions of impressions on Twitter and articles in CNBC, Mashable, TheNextWeb, and many other publications, all because they pointed out a fairly obvious feature in a clever way.

Another lesson from this story is that what little patience users had for Facebook's data hoarding seems to be coming to an end. Pair that with the fact that early data seems to indicate that as few as 4% of iPhone users in the US are choosing to opt in to being tracked, and we would all be well advised to diversify our media budgets away from Facebook.

Written by Conner Galway, Junction Consulting