Google, Facebook, and Greyhound...Oh My!

One of my favorite pastimes would have to be listening to NPR (National Public Radio). I started listening to NPR at a young age when my father would drive my brother and I around. From Car Talk to A Prairie Home Companion to Morning Edition, I am a lover of all the programs on the station.

So it comes as no surprise that even though I find myself listening to less radio and more to my iPod, I still have given up on NPR. While listening to my weekly NPR Pop Culture podcast I came across an interesting story. Margot Adler narrated a piece were she discussed how she noticed that the Facebook ads that were being shown to her were geared to an older demographic. And when she left out the age portion on her Facebook profile she started to get different ads on her Facebook pages based on more of her interests.

Now that got me thinking about some products and services that would benefit from this feature on Facebook. One of them would have to Greyhound. I just used Greyhound to visit a friend of mine in Atlanta. Their service was more affordable than riding an airplane and seeing that I am a college student with limited funds, affordability is the rule. If Greyhound would place more ads on Facebook I am sure they would see more sales from college students that are looking for the affordable weekend getaway.

The ironic thing about writing this post was that I mentioned it to my Atlanta friend this morning, and she told me about a similar story that was on NPR too. But with this story the whole premise was the major increase of revenue that Google has received. Laura Sydell discusses that Google's new funds come from its customized ads for its search engine users. Every time an user searches for something using Google it customizes the ads that the user sees so that the coincide with the user's search. So I typed in "bus transportation deals" and I was surpised not see an ad for Greyhound.