Now Facebook ads home in on whole family

MANY Facebook users may already find it unsettling when the website shows them adverts for things they’ve looked at elsewhere on the internet.

But the social media giant is about to get even creepier – by targeting whole households at a time.

Those who see an advert for a hotel in France, for example, could find the rest of their family have been shown the same one.

Facebook hopes they will then sit around the dinner table making holiday plans and will all come up with the same idea.

Household targeting could also be used to try to persuade a family they need a joint subscription to Netflix, or to improve the quality of gift-giving by showing parents toys for their children before Christmas, or a husband the exact item his wife desires.

But the scheme has sparked concern among Facebook users. Household targeting could spoil birthday surprises by revealing what a loved one has bought, or expose cheating spouses by sending partners ads for dating websites or romantic getaways they’re not invited on. Other users may object to advertisers knowing so much about them in the first place.

Facebook users can technically opt out of the scheme in their privacy settings by unticking the category which says they are a ‘member of a family-based household’. But many might not know they can do this.

To identify households, Facebook can match members’ surnames, compares places they’ve ‘checked in’ together and look at the personal information they reveal on the site – for example declaring they are married or confirming another user is their child.

It also uses location data, including people’s postcode or their IP address – the unique code used to identify a computer. The scheme will also use data from other sites. It will not track what users look at on every other website they visit, but will glean information from companies they have shared information with in the past – for example by signing up to a mailing list – and then match this to its own database.

Advertising helped the social media giant rake in £7.9billion in profits last year.

Earlier this week Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said it now has more than two billion users. The site is eager to capitalise on this huge audience to make the household scheme a success and rival TV advertising.