Looking at facebook ads a while ago I wanted to advertise to my fellow students in Trinity. The pool of TCD students to target was 2k odd. I thought this mad considering the fact that if in the college computer labs, one glance around the room and you would see that at least half the room was on facebook at that time ha. On a campus of 15k students there had to be more than 2k on facebook.

The reason for the discrepancy is down to the context of a user’s sign-up. When I signed up (as a second year undergrad in TCD) I was asked for a college email address as at that time one needed a college email address to sign up, no non-college goers seemed to be able to sign-up to the social network. This was due to Facebook’s networks security system whereby at sign-up, one could only view non-friends’ pages if they were a part of your network (ie. no ‘Bebo-stalking’ of old). This helped the network grow organically but also in a concentrated fashion. They opened up sign-ups to people over 18 and then over 13 as opposed to anyone in a particular network. At this stage, people had the option of selecting what school, college or other organisation they would consider themselves a part of for statement on their profile.

The dodgy numbers are a hangover from this. When looking at targeting my ad I came to a realisation. All the present TCD first and second years, whose activity I could see, had their networks still set as their alma mater: their secondary school. Since sign-up they hadn’t changed their network. If you are to look at TCD ad targeting, the pool is 2k -odd: the vast majority of this group are 22 or older, a lot of them (from my own frame of reference: I can verify as a student in TCD for the last 6 years and admitted facebook junkie) have graduated and left TCD but have not changed their network info on their profile. The same goes for the present freshmen students.

Basically, to rely on Facebook’s specific numbers would be foolhardy. their segmentation numbers are very, very wrong. They need something of a census ha. This is an issue they should be very concerned about though as it seriously affects their ad targeting. It is, in its current state, unfit for purpose.

Louise Holden of the Times here. I’m doing a piece on Facebook and Irish universities – I was hoping you might give me a bit of background. Can you mail me if you can help? Thanks a million.

Louise

I just wonder what metrics the flyers thing is using? It appears it no longer shows numbers either.

Am I just missing something?