The Facebook stealth experiment....

S

sublight

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Facebook has an incredible advertising system. It will let you target very specific people based on a variety of parameters, one of which is who their employer is.

I took out several target advertising campaigns on Facebook using the attached picture. The ad pointed to the stealth blimp web page.

One campaign was targeted specifically at air force personnel.

Another other campaign (aerospace) was targeted specifically at employees of Northrop, Lockheed, and Boeing.

The Air force campaign produced some very interesting data. I could match my server web logs directly with the click throughs from Facebook. As a result there was a growing amount of web traffic from Air forces bases all over the world, starting with that initial ad click through. Apparently Air Force personnel were forwarding the page to their friends. I also found that one specific Air Force base had a very large number of hits shortly after and continuing on for several days after a click-through from that facebook ad. I wont publish that base here, because quite frankly I am afraid of reprisals if I do... :)

Now as for the Aerospace campaign, I matched the click-throughs to various Lockheed, Boeing, and Northrup sites, and just like the Air force campaign there were a large number of secondary hits by one particular company. Boeing had 20 times the amount of secondary hits from two of their sites in the Pacific Northwest.

I'm not using this data to push any particular theory, but I thought you guys would find it very interesting....
 

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Independent publishers, take notice on how to advertise!
 
Absolutely this would be something indy publishers would want to use. You don't pay for ads to just "run" you can set it up to pay only for people that click on the ads, and you can track them. You can be extremely specific in the targeting by income level, geographic area, level of education, profession, employer, etc. You can use just about any combination of these variables to target the exact audience you are looking for.

The price was reasonable as well. In most cases I paid as little as 18 cents per hit.
 
This site gets way more web traffic from Boeing than Northrop or Lockheed too. Not sure I'd read too much into that. Cool idea though.
 
overscan said:
This site gets way more web traffic from Boeing than Northrop or Lockheed too. Not sure I'd read too much into that. Cool idea though.
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Which Air Force base do you get the most hits from?
 
overscan said:
This site gets way more web traffic from Boeing than Northrop or Lockheed too. Not sure I'd read too much into that. Cool idea though.
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Washington or St. Louis? ;)
 
sublight said:
Facebook has an incredible advertising system. It will let you target very specific people based on a variety of parameters, one of which is who their employer is.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't think to highly of it. Most people – myself included - indulge in facebook for two things: keeping up with friends and family and checking out stupid sh*t. Since its unlikely you are known to and related to most of your web hits you may fall into the other category…
 
Abraham Gubler said:
sublight said:
Facebook has an incredible advertising system. It will let you target very specific people based on a variety of parameters, one of which is who their employer is.
Click to expand...

I wouldn't think to highly of it. Most people – myself included - indulge in facebook for two things: keeping up with friends and family and checking out stupid sh*t. Since its unlikely you are known to and related to most of your web hits you may fall into the other category…
Click to expand...
If you are too ignorant to understand the benefits of having access to 500 million people, well, that is your loss.....
 
sublight said:
If you are too ignorant to understand the benefits of having access to 500 million people, well, that is your loss.....
Click to expand...

I have access to 6 billion people as well. Its called: living in the real world.
 
Abraham Gubler said:
sublight said:
If you are too ignorant to understand the benefits of having access to 500 million people, well, that is your loss.....
Click to expand...

I have access to 6 billion people as well. Its called: living in the real world.
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You must have a lot of money to be able to go talk to every human on earth. :p

Mind giving me a bag of that cash? ;D
 
Demon Lord Razgriz said:
Mind giving me a bag of that cash? ;D
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Well I don’t but here’s 10 cents worth of free advice…

Demon Lord Razgriz said:
You must have a lot of money to be able to go talk to every human on earth. :p
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Re:
I have access to 6 billion people as well. Its called: living in the real world.
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There is a big difference between “talk” and “access”. ‘Stealth Blimp Nutter #1’ was proclaiming how good it is to have access to 500 million people via Facebook. Even if you accept that no doubt highly inflated number by Facebook’s ad sellers you only have a potential of talking to them all via Facebook.

I assume most people visiting this webpage have access to a telephone, which means you can therefore have access to all the other 4 billion mobile and 1.27 billion fixed-line phones in the world. So does that mean you can communicate with them all? Pick up your phone and dial ‘1’ and then ‘2’ and so on and let me know how many people you talk to by the end of the year… Times that by 60-80 for the rest of your life and I doubt you will be close to 5.27 billion. Even if you could average one successful phone call every 30 seconds you would still only be able to call one million per annum.

See there is a big difference between access and the actual ability to communicate.
 
^pretty much depends on what kind of access you're referring to

facebook is pretty much an information hog and 500 million is pretty much a large population statistically AND they give out information willingly...

not that I'm in favor with the whole idea... but yeah, It gives companies a good overview of what their potential market is getting about.

but that's just my 2 cents
 
Btw. Saw your ad and ignored it - too ATS for me :D
However, it is a little creepy if it was targeted accurately enough to get me...
 
Avimimus said:
Btw. Saw your ad and ignored it - too ATS for me :D
However, it is a little creepy if it was targeted accurately enough to get me...
Click to expand...

That was 2010. The ad control mechanisms they have now are even more scary.
 
That's actually a pretty clever spear phishing experiment. I get that it isn't scientific but I wonder if this is a regular trick for OSINT outfits.

I wonder if you would get similar traction with a blanket aerospace campaign with ads displaying some hypotheticals one at a time on a monthly rotating basis and seeing if there is a statistically significant hit from particular companies/locations against a particular speculative aircraft.

I can't help but giggle imagining logging in day after the start of a new ad and seeing a spike in traffic coming from the free wifi at McCarren.
 

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