If you wish to convince someone to quit smoking, stop eating meat, stop riding motorcycles, or initiate sex, but for some reason or other they won't listen to you, a startup claims to have the solution: adtech.

That's right, for US$29 you can brainwash and manipulate a loved one with targeted ads, a UK company called The Spinner claims.

It has been described as "the Cambridge Analytica" of sex - in reference to the data analytics firm Donald Trump and Brexit campaigners used to covertly influence people on Facebook.

The technique is called "Facebook sniper targeting", and it's apparently technically feasible.

Max Doyle, managing director of Sydney-based social media marketing agency Hello Social, told Hack services like this were part of a trend towards more personalised ads.

"I remember seeing Minority Report in 2002 and thinking 'oh wow marketing is going to get a lot more tailored'," he said.

"It's turned from billboards to having influencers selling products - it's not only getting more personal, but now people are billboards."

"It's funny that now people are buying ads to influence other people."

How it works

The Spinner explains on its website:

"The basic package offers a set of 10 different articles presented to the target 180 times over a three month period. The articles, along with their eye catching headlines, are chosen by a group of psychologists in order to influence the target on a subconscious level.

"The Spinner sends you an innocent looking link. This link is sent to the target via text message. When the target presses the link, a cookie connected to the link attaches itself to the target's phone. From this point the target will be strategically bombarded with articles and media specified for him or her."

For example, a man may choose the 'Initiate Sex' package (apparently the most popular) and send the link to his partner, who will be exposed to ads subtly designed to influence their behaviour.

Other ready-made ad runs include 'Propose Marriage' and 'Stop Drinking'.

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The Spinner first popped up in the media in July last year, and Spinner's spokesman, Elliot Shefler, has been interviewed numerous times. Despite this, it's not clear how many users the service has, or whether Shefler is who he says he is.

In separate interviews published days apart, the spokesman has claimed the service has either 35,000 or 150,000 users.

A recent Daily Beast article has cast doubt on the legitimacy of the Spinner's business operations. The company's official mailing address is reportedly a London cafe. Shefler has no digital trace in public records or on social media.

Does it work?

There are also questions about whether the service works at all.

Max Doyle from Hello Social says the service is technically feasible - Facebook lets advertisers target a single user who has clicked on a link that then attaches a cookie to the target's phone or computer.

Facebook also allows advertisers to target groups as small as 20 users. Max said an advertiser could, in theory, target a single person by filling the group with 19 fake accounts. The only real account in the group would be the targeted one.

"Way back in the early days of Facebook, in 2010-11, you could get really granular with the marketing," he said.

"There was a book published in 2011 in which the guy used the hyper-marketing on Facebook to target his wife with an ad."

That was what you used to be able to do. Eventually they realised how stalkerish that was.

Facebook installed safeguards to make the marketing reach less granular, but marketers appear to have since found work-arounds.

For example, this how-to guide from December 2017 explains how to get around the the 20-person minimum group size for targeted ads.

Whether or not the Spinner has very many users, whether or not someone is going to stop drinking or propose marriage simply because they saw a sponsored post in their feed, it seems feasible that someone can try to target and brainwash a single person through Facebook.

"Selling media is the business model of all social networks and almost all newspapers, news sites, and TV channels," Shefler said in a recent interview.

"They sell their space and air-time to advertisers who are using it to change your behavior and influence you to buy products. How is this different? Brands and politicians are already doing it for years. We are giving those abilities [to] the common man."