gender, demographics, and targeted web ads

Dear demographically-targeting web advertisers,

I understand that you are in the business of making money by guessing from the minimal information I provide you through my profiles at various social networking sites which of your customer’s advertisements I am most likely to take the time to investigate.

To this end, I actually endeavor to provide you with more than the bare minimum of profile information. Nothing interesting, nothing personal; networking sites for work get to know about my work life and my work-acknowledged hobbies. When I say I care about “environmental issues” and “hiking”, I expect at least the occasional ad for fair trade hippie decor and recycled doodads and camping gear. When I admit I am a software engineer, I am unsurprised by certification training programs, domain hosting, and other networking sites targeted toward computer professionals. Absolutely nothing on any work-related profile belies any traditionally feminine hobbies or interests whatsoever.

This is intentional. I provide this information because I am interested in knowing about new and different websites for fair trade hippie decor, recycled doodads, and any click-stuff-on-the-web charity whatnot I may support. I provide this information to outweigh the massive assumptions made every time I am forced to enter “M or F” or type in my obviously female legal name. I provide this information to outweigh the equally massive assumptions made when that gender tag is correlated with a birth date indicating I am not only a legal adult but pushing thirty.

It never works. No matter how much mainstream, ad-targetable, genderblind information I provide, more than half of the targeted ads I see are for weight loss (usually in terms of dress sizes or low calorie stereotypical craving snacks), snake oil anti-aging secrets and stretch mark removal. Today, facebook tried to give me a $10 off coupon at diapers.com and “acne care in a chocolate”. I complained in my status message on the selfsame site about the general trend and within a few minutes my office was full of male co-workers surprised and appalled by the discrepancy between my experience and the ads they normally see that appear to be far more solidly based on their interests. (They were followed immediately by the few elderly female scientists in my department, clucking knowingly and annoyed at the same.) The personal manner of delivery makes the problem at once obvious to the mistargeted user and completely invisible to everyone else.

I see a very simple solution to avoid the ire of increasing numbers of folks online, a very simple option M or F or ‘I’m not telling’ or ‘don’t use this information for ad-targeting’ and the same on ages. But the traditional sales force doesn’t want that, I’m sure. It would break everything they know in marketing, to think we want to be approached as people. And so, every now and then, I click on the fair trade hippie decor and have a look around in the confidence that every business in the chain knows where I came from, and therefore what worked. And I rail at the source and bring the issue to the attention of people, who by the very purpose of the medium, never would have noticed.

What information do you knowingly provide the ubiquitous internet ad machine, ultimately conceived by the traditional sales force and implemented by human programmers in all their own demographic glory? What do you receive for your witting and unwitting efforts? Despite the commentary of my scientist friends, is it as bad on the other side of the gender lines? I’m not sure if “yes” or “no” on that one is the more acceptable result.