On Mediapost's "Online Spin" today, David Berkowitz has a great riff on personalized advertising gone wrong. The culprit is Facebook, which pairs what it knows about each member's age and gender, to display ads with headlines like the one I've been seeing there lately: "43 yr old Man Overweight?"

Other personalized ads, on social networks, news and content sites and elsewhere, display ad copy tailored to the user's home state, name, or other data, as in "Uninsured in Vermont?"

Even when they don't personalize the ad copy, Facebook's ad-targeting can be off-putting, as over-50 blogger Bob West notes about the ads for hair loss remedies, over-50 dating services, and stair-lifts he routinely sees when he logs into the site: "So, Facebook's idea of a male in his 50's is one who is losing his hair and can't walk... but who regularly dates young hotties."

The Berkowitz article, Stop Calling Me Fat, Facebook, nicely summarizes the promises and pitfalls of custom ads (especially on social media sites, where we expect a modicum of privacy):

All of this may simply indicate that these ads are working. At the very least, these ads are getting noticed. That should help Facebook with its monetization issues, right?

Yet for the average consumer, this becomes a turnoff. When ads start calling out to people, especially women, "You're 30 and overweight," it's hard not to take it personally. Meanwhile, the advertisers who are currently getting noticed for these ads aren't big brands or the kinds of marketers consumers sometimes wouldn't mind hearing from. The weight loss ad targeting me not only told me "Ab exercises won't get you a cut body" so that I should actually exercise less (which is almost impossible for me to do), but it promises, "Burn fat and increase energy with ultra green tea." I'm definitely drinking the wrong brand.

My friend who inspired this column said Facebook isn't the only site giving her the willies. She noted reading a certain blog where the ads called out to her by name, something which advertisers have been able to do for years but haven't used much. In a sense, consumers don't realize how fortunate they are that most advertisers are more conservative than they can be online.

The problem on Facebook is that the rules with its Social Ads allow some advertisers to extend into that "creepy" territory all too easily, bringing negative attention to its whole platform and ruining the party for everyone else who tries to just run a solid campaign.

Note: At this time, the Mediapost link is returning a "fatal error" due to some problems at the Mediapost site. Sorry!