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First of all, what's going on? The College for Human Rights has determined that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, discriminates based on gender when displaying job vacancies, where women primarily see ads for stereotypical female jobs such as receptionists. Men see more ads for roles like mechanic. The texts are gender-neutral though.

That's accurate. At Red Rocket, we recruit for both examples. Meta checks whether the copy we provide complies with the rules established against job discrimination. If, for instance, we say we are looking for a woman, Meta rejects the ad based on discrimination guidelines. Rightly so, or not. Whatever. Advertise for a truck mechanic in the paper, and at least 90% of applicants will be male.

In terms of visuals, it becomes more complicated. At Red Rocket, we create images of people our clients indicate as their ideal profile. Often that is imagery of an existing employee. For us, it doesn’t matter at all what that person wears under their overall. But we know that people who see ads they can identify with show more engagement with that ad. Think of liking, reacting, clicking, but also filling out their details to apply. Voilà, you now have half of Red Rocket's revenue model in your head.

But what goes wrong here according to the College for Human Rights? Well, the algorithm optimizes based on those likes, reactions, and even registrations. In short: "Oh, Helmut, 35, responded to this ad. I’ll ensure more men like Helmut, 35, based on their gender, age, and online behavior, see the same ad to increase the chances of conversion." This means the chances that Gerda, 55, will see this ad become smaller. After all, a budget is used, and you know; you can only spend a euro once.

Now Gillette doesn’t advertise in Libelle, and Always pads aren’t found in AutoWeek. But online, there’s much more to be gained. If you ask me personally, it’s a political matter. Zuckerberg was prominently present at the inauguration of the new President Trump, leading to new attempts to undercut Meta. The hypocrisy lies in the fact that advertisers within TikTok are 100% free to target job ads towards genders and age groups. Below is a screenshot from the Red Rocket office:

Now you won’t hear Red Rocket complain. We know quite well that TikTok will also eventually be targeted, but I think many people are mistaken if we have an online world without such optimization. Annoying ads really become annoying if you, as a user, have no feeling with a particular ad.

Finally: When a campaign is newly set up, algorithms fire broadly and look based on user behavior which target group shows the most interaction. If Gerda's wanted to be Mechanics so badly, they would have seen those ads.

Have a great weekend and see you next week! Don't forget to subscribe.

Kevin