What’s a ‘dark Facebook ad’? Some scammy way of doing FB ads for GROWTH HACKING?
It's basically using the audience segmentation tools available in facebook to make sure a promoted post is only seen by a very specific group... and then some. So in the past when we had a facebook page, I might have used promoted posts it if i was doing a comp or ticket giveaway to make sure the post was only seen by people within a certain geographic area who'd be able to get to the gig; another approach might be to only let an ad/promoted post be seen by I dunno... 18-35 year olds who like a certain genre of music or whatever.
But facebook took it a step further by allowing you to do it for unpublished posts - if you weren't in the chosen demographic that the promoted post was targeted at, you would never be able to see the post in question. Pair that up with negative messaging, and you have Dark Advertising DUN DUN DUNNNNN.
Trump campaign using targeted Facebook posts to discourage black Americans from voting