Have you had that experience when you were talking to a friend about something, and then all of a sudden you see an ad for it on Facebook or Instagram? You probably had one of two reactions:
1. Wow! This is exactly what I need, and now I don’t need to search for it. [clicks BUY]
-or-
2. OMG this is soooo strange. We were just talking abo…wait, are they listening to me? [scroll stops, eyes wander the room]
Is this creepy or convenient, knowing that so much of your information is collected and used, for better or worse, to get you to buy things?
No matter your reaction, these experiences always prompt a discussion about data privacy and the proper use by social media platforms, …and if Alexa is really always listening.
Meta AI and You
In a new turn on the topic, Meta announced they will begin using data from your AI interactions across all of their products (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Threads) to “improve” your ads. Despite our entertainment from using Facebook we need to remember that Meta is simply a giant advertising company. In 2024 they earned $160 billion in advertising revenue. For comparison Disney+, including Disney, Hulu, and ESPN earned $10.4 billion, and the traditional networks (ABC, NBC, CBS) earned and estimated $3.8 billion. Facebook does not really produce any product (98% of revenue is from ads) — except small efforts with virtual reality and Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses. As we have known since the beginning, at Meta/Facebook, you are the product.
It seems natural then, when Meta needs to find ways to increase revenue that they have two options: 1) Find more people to use their apps or 2) further monetize the data from their existing customers. The former is seemingly unviable, as nearly everyone on the planet with a smart phone is connected to a Meta app, and new user adoption is slowing. As of the first quarter of 2025, they reported 3.06 billion monthly active users among the 5.3 billion people with access to the technology (the total world population is 8 billion).
Improved Recommendations and Ads?
Meta’s press release cites an example of posting a reel on hiking and how it is similar to using Meta AI to ask about your hiking interests. This could guide content and ads towards hiking. However, many people use AI for more than looking up interesting topics. They summarizes documents for work, they create their own content, and more recently craft images and videos (Imagine and Vibes). It is hard to see how those creative AI pursuits will improve content and ads.
These are not new concepts for marketing, just new tools and data for marketers to figure out if it can be of any use to them. For a long time, targeted ads used a variety of information about you to get the right message to the right consumer. Sometimes it worked great, other times, when ads are missing their market, they get ignored.
A few things to note about Meta’s use of your AI data:
- Data collected from Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses will be used. (So many questions here, like do people you look at now need an opt-out clause?)
- Certain AI topics are taboo and are excluded, such as religion, politics, health, and uniquely, your ‘trade union membership’ (yes, this was explicitly listed)
- You cannot opt out of their use of AI data unless you live in the European Union or one of the few other countries with strong data privacy regulations.
It will be interesting to see how this develops and if data privacy rules in the EU will influence changes elsewhere. Or maybe data privacy is just a concern of the past and the AI of the future is here to stay in your ‘news’ feeds.
Trading In On Your Data
The takeaway is that marketing leaders and consumers will need to consider whether the trade of your data is worth the improvement in what you see online. Not just ads, but everything else you see, which always makes me wonder…what are they not showing us that might be interesting to me?
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