The Rise and Fall of Personalized Advertising

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Early internet builders found that web pages made by users themselves, user-generated content, told you things about their creators. We were interested in targeting ads based on the content of a user's page. When Facebook came along, it took this idea of targeted advertising to a whole new level. The way that ad targeting works now is we follow you all over the web and then we try to make guesses at who you are based on what you do.

Mark Zuckerberg used advertising to turn Facebook into the first global social media giant, boasting 3bn users around the world. But today there are questions about the business model that has powered it for the past 15 years, and what Zuckerberg’s new focus on building the Metaverse means for the platform that started it all. Elaine Moore speaks to veteran Silicon Valley investor Roger McNamee, one-time advisor to Zuckerberg; writer and researcher Tim Hwang, author of Subprime Attention Crisis; and Steven Levy, editor at large at Wired and author of Facebook: The Inside Story. Meta declined a request for an interview for this episode, but directed us to their Q1 2023 earnings.

Presented by Elaine Moore. Produced by Edwin Lane and Josh Gabert-Doyon, Executive producer is Manuela Saragosa. Sound design by Breen Turner and Samantha Giovinco. Original music by Metaphor Music. The FT’s head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Special thanks to Hannah Murphy

Clips: Meta, US Senate.

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