CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW DIFFERENT THIS IS??? because as someone who works in digital marketing, my jaw literally dropped.
When I put out an ad for a client on Facebook, I can target like... new moms in their 30s who are looking for furniture within a 10-mile radius. Or people who have an anniversary coming up. People who have just moved. People who are in a new relationship. People who have elementary school kids and tend to vote Republican. People who have liked certain Pages. It's absolutely unnerving.
the utter chaos of this, though.
it's just... incredible.
Honestly though, as someone myself who works in infosec and data privacy, what this suggests to me is that Tumblr either doesn’t have, or isn’t willing / able to use, that detailed targeting information about its users. Which is great!! Every other company out there - not just social media companies but everything from your grocery store to your car insurance company to your operating system provider - actively collects as much demographic data as it can about its users specifically for this kind of ad targeting purposes.
Obviously Tumblr still collects some data and uses it for ad targeting; they do have this in their Privacy settings:
But the fact that they’re either unable, or are choosing not, to make that data available to people buying Blaze posts is such a huge win for data protection and a giant thumbing of the nose to the FAANGs who believe that the only way to make ad revenue work is to make ads as targeted as possible.
I can’t express how much I hope Blaze succeeds with this insane and chaotic model. XD
