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You may or may not have noticed all kinds of political ads bombarding the periphery of your Facebook profile in the past few weeks. I noticed it right about the time the conventions started, and since I’ve been clicking on them to see where they link to, I’ve been served with even more — to the point that they outnumber the non-political ads on my profile now.

According to a study by 140 Proof the political social ad market is about $142 million this year and it seems like all sides, as well as some on the sidelines, are piling on. Although the social ad market has been growing a lot recently — no thanks to Facebook and Twitter tinkering with their platforms so that you have  to buy ads in order to be effective there — social media consumers don’t really like it.

According to this study from the University of Southern California:

85 percent of adult Americans agree (including 47 percent who agree strongly) that “If I found out that Facebook was sending me ads for political candidates based on my profile information that I had set to private, I would be angry.”

But where are Facebookers and Tweeps going to go to get their social media fix? Exactly nowhere. Why wouldn’t you get served personalized political ads in a contentious election year when Facebook already knows everything there is to know about you based on your Likes, and the fact that they sell ads based on your zip code?

Welcome to politicking in 2012.

I looked at ads that appeared on my feed and found that most of them, with the exception of Juntos for Romney, were linked to external sites. Barack Obama’s campaign is running a variety of ads with characters including President Bill Clinton and First Lady Michelle Obama, as well as the president himself, and they all go to the main campaign website.

There were some third-party ads, too, these also linked to non-Facebook URLs. Some of these featured boogeymen in the form of Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, even Paul Ryan in some cases. So here they are, feel free to use them elsewhere just please credit us as a source. You can see the entire gallery here.

About Sara Inés Calderón (183 Posts)

Sara Inés Calderón is a journalist and writer who lives between Texas and California. Follow her on Twitter @SaraChicaD.