On September 1, Facebook began inviting
advertisers to reach its users by targeting them through phone number or email
address.
Facebook skirts privacy worries by
emphasizing that advertisers already have that information (in fact, an
advertiser has to send the info to Facebook, which looks for match-ups within
its database).
Advertisers can blend phone number- or email
address-targeting with other demographic markers (like age, gender, education
and interests) to reach specific Facebook users.
So an advertiser with no more than a
phone number could, for example, target ads to affluent women in their 40s with
graduate degrees in physics and an interest in golf.
