This article originally appeared on ABACUS You’re probably single, ride a scooter, and are desperate for love if you like a particular Chinese martial arts mobile game. That was the message Facebook delivered as a part of a talk on how Chinese developers can target their games outside the country at ChinaJoy, the country’s biggest game convention. Facebook’s social network is banned inside China and last week it was apparently blocked from setting up a subsidiary inside the country. But it has a two-storey booth in the B2B section of the show in Shanghai, focused on reaching out to game developers and publishers. In a public talk we attended, Facebook’s Tim Liu Qing spoke about one particular game: Jiang Hu Da Meng, a game about wuxia, or Chinese martial arts. He outlined how Facebook helped the game’s publisher, NetEase, to create a strategy to bring the game to users in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia. Facebook distributed ads for the game, and helped NetEase with its ad campaign by building a profile of the type of person most likely to play the game. For this game, Facebook said the target audience were likely to make US$1,200 a month, ride a scooter, use Android, live at home with their parents… and was most likely single and desperate for love. They added the target was not likely to have a strong personality and is a follower in life. This is the part where I have to admit to you that I’ve been getting ads for this game a lot on Facebook… even though I think I only fit about half of that description. (Also, single and desperate? I prefer “single and ready to mingle,” but hey…) Some of them made me uncomfortable. In this ad , two Taiwanese influencers were heaping praise on the game. Later, the guy on the right says, “In Jiang Hu Da Meng, you can visit brothels and drink with prostitutes. And you can even peep at girls bathing in hot springs.” Facebook didn’t create these types of video, to be clear -- but it did play a few of them during the event. It surprised me that they would bring up this kind of ads as an example of quality marketing in a public talk. Still, Facebook reaching out to developers is not surprising. They said their (apparently blocked) facility in China was meant to be an incubator for local developers, helping them to create apps and games for the rest of the world. Did Facebook just get blocked from opening a company in China? For more insights into China tech, sign up for our tech newsletters , subscribe to our Inside China Tech podcast , and download the comprehensive 2019 China Internet Report . Also roam China Tech City , an award-winning interactive digital map at our sister site Abacus .
