I can haz more than one demo for people over 64?

“Who wants to hang out with 70 year olds?” my grandfather asked once. He was 81 at the time.  It was a funny rhetorical question for a 25 year old to hear, and it’s stuck with me ever since. I’m pretty sure that up until that point in life, I’d lumped everyone who could claim a senior citizen’s discount into the general category of  “old people” and left it at that.

I was lucky enough to get this take on demographics from my granddad, and it’s served me well. My current employer sells travel to customers who average in their mid-seventies. These folks are different from people already well into their eighties, and they’re really different from the Baby Boomers who are now entering their mid-sixties.

So when is Facebook, that coterie of lovable scamps, going to wake up to this? Facebook’s ad targeting and demos for fan pages lump everyone over 64 into one category. That’s 3.3 million people by the Facebook ad creation widget’s own estimation — roughly the population of Uruguay or Lithuania.

One demographic. Really, Facebook?

Listen to my grandpa. Then give me a tool with which I can actually target an ad to my demo, and maybe you’ll make some money off of my employer. ‘Til then, fuhgeddaboutit.

Photo credits for this post: Baby in Sunglasses (Vincent Valenti)