The men’s engagement with the ads did not surprise some small business owners interviewed by The Times. Morgan Koontz, a founder of Bella & Omi, a West Virginia children’s clothing business that promotes itself on social media, said the company received “inappropriate, almost pedophile-type, perverted comments” from men when they started advertising on Facebook in 2021.
“It made our models uncomfortable, and it made us uncomfortable,” he said.
When the company expanded to Instagram, she and her co-owner, Erica Barrios, decided to avoid the problem by targeting only women, even though fathers and grandfathers were among their regulars. that customer.
Lindsey Rowse, who owns Tightspot Dancewear Center in Pennsylvania, also restricts her ads to women. When she doesn’t exclude men, she says, they make up 75 percent of her audience, and few buy her products. Separately, she limits how often she shares photos of young models in her non-advertising posts because they tend to attract men, she said.
“I don’t know how people find it,” he said. “I want to just block all the boys.”
Other business owners expressed similar confusion about how their ads were distributed. Since January, Utah-based children’s clothing company Young Days has seen more than double the share of boys its ads reach without major changes to its targeting criteria, according to Brian Bergman, who oversees e-commerce. The shift toward men hurt sales, he said, and the company has since focused on reaching women.
“It’s not a profitable business for us, but the algorithm keeps pushing us toward men,” he said.
Carson Kessler contributed reporting, and Julie Tate contributed research.
