Ran into a realtor at a coffee shop in Denver who showed me their method for geo-targeted Facebook ads down to the neighborhood

She said she pulls county assessor data and cross-references it with past client lists to build custom audiences, saving about $200 a month on wasted ad spend, and I'm wondering if anyone else has tried layering public records with lookalike audiences or if that's crossing some kind of line.

3 comments

3 Comments

oscarwright15d ago

Mixing public records with Facebook's targeting does feel a little sketchy when you think about it too hard. Plenty of agents do stuff like this without realizing how close they are to a privacy gray area though. Hard to blame someone for trying to save money when the platform keeps bleeding them dry.

butler.shane11d agoMost Upvoted

Yeah, but that's the thing with @taylor.betty's story though. She got the perfect wake up call and still people will keep doing it. Facebook's whole system is built to make you feel like you're being smart with data when you're really just dancing on a line. They don't care until they catch you, then it's your problem. Most agents think they're too small to get flagged until they do.

taylor.betty15d ago

Oh man, that's a classic "I'm being clever but also kinda creepy" move. @oscarwright hit it - most agents stumble into this stuff without realizing how weird it gets. I tried something similar last year, spent like 3 hours matching tax records to email addresses, then Facebook flagged my ad for "discriminatory housing practices" because my custom audience was 90% one demographic. Real smooth, Betty. Saved $200 on ad spend but wasted a Saturday and got a platform warning instead.