Notes

Links

Facebook Ads Prank NFT, opensea.io
Guy drives roommate to paranoia with eerily targeted Facebook ads, reddit.com/r/bestof

Versions

'Facebook Ads Prank' became the name for my 'The Ultimate Retaliation: Pranking My Roommate With Targeted Facebook Ads' post to the Ghost Influence blog; published in August 2014. [1] The story creatively chronicled my Facebook Advertising campaign targeting a custom audience of one person—my roommate—with ads that were eerily informed about his life. The prank had been executed months prior and didn't become a written story until I'd grown tired of telling it verbally.

I submitted the ad to /r/marketing on Reddit and—within hours—it had been crossposted to r/bestof and both submissions had reached the Front Page. I was interviewed by AdWeek and featured by Business Insider. [2][3] The story had 450k readers in the first 72-hours and generated 38k backlinks in its first month. In 2015, Ryan Holiday featured me in 'Media Manipulators' on The Observer to recap the response; published as 'the Facebook Prank That Gamed Reddit'. [4]

The media attention driven to my prank story prompted Facebook to "improve" their Advertising Policies, but the changes were largely symbolic and later proven ineffective; [5][6] most notably by the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. Facebook claims the loophole is closed; it's not. [6]