Nowhere on David Berkowitz’s Facebook profile does it say he’s Jewish. So, he was a bit surprised to see a targeted travel ad with the headline “Hey Jew.” While Berkowitz, an interactive marketing specialist and blogger, is indeed Jewish, he wondered how the advertisement figured that out. Was it based on his hometown? His alma mater? His love of Seinfeld? Maybe, he joked, it was a sign of “top secret Jew-havioral targeting algorithms.” The mystery was solved when he heard back from the advertiser, Katan Adventures: “In order to reach Jews who haven’t listed their religion on Facebook (which, by the way, is the vast majority) we run ads in metro areas with large Jewish populations and try to grab their attention with ridiculous lines such as ‘hey jew’ but we obviously get a lot of wasted clicks with this strategy as well. And some angry emails.” UPDATE: Facebook has now nixed the “Hey Jew” ads.
—Posted by David Griner
