Social networks are the shiny new toys of the advertising industry. Like limitless digital playgrounds, social networks allow advertisers to experiment with inexpensive campaigns in a variety of directions and reach an audience as broad or finely segmented as they wish with virtually no financial or reputational repercussions.

Yes, online ads are less in-your-face as compared to say, television ads, but with the boom of Tivo, On-Demand and other DVR programs, even a TV ad’s legitimacy as a major consumer influencer is becoming a thing of the past, unnecessary to the TV-watching experience.

So advertisers are taking the natural next step and moving their messages to popular sites like Facebook in an attempt to make a buck, drive traffic to their sites and stir up consumer awareness in a fresh, viable way.

But the nature of Facebook ads creates somewhat of an advertising challenge: how do you attract the user’s attention and move them from a social-stalking mindset to a want-to-buy mindset in 135 characters or less?

That’s where the ad strategies begin to take an off-the-beaten-path turn for the worse…and weird.

Have you ever taken a look at the ads that are pulled specifically for you on your Facebook homepage?  Log on and actually read them.

Mine, for example, show ads for a book self-publishing program, a food blog called “Once Upon a Chef” and an application that shows you what your offspring would look like if you had a baby with your favorite celebrity.   The first two make sense; I have “cooking” and “writing” listed explicitly under my interests, plus there’s the fact that I graduated with an English degree from college.  The last ad, however, seems a little off base.

And it’s not a fluke.  These odd, eerily pinpointed web ads are currently a popular strategy for many small companies with self-service ad campaigns on Facebook: they try to grab your attention with bizarre – and sometimes downright creepy – messages with personal information pulled straight from your profile.

And yes, from a business perspective, maybe these companies do have to go to any length necessary (albeit strange and off-putting lengths) to get their voices heard in a conversation that is already extremely noisy, chaotic and crowded. Their teensy-tiny ad is really just a drop of water in an ocean of constant chatter, so getting your company’s voice heard might mean you have to scream something to catch users off guard. But just how loud is too loud?

I was once shown an ad promising me a free MacBook Pro just because I recently graduated college (coincidentally the same day I switched my status to a college alum).  But when I clicked on the ad, I was redirected to a questionnaire asking me to review products and sign up for various email lists and a free 30-day trial of Netflix.  Even though I didn’t complete the questionnaire, I’m still paying the price, continually getting spam emails from unrelated companies selling god knows what with too-good-to-be-true offers.

Obviously, anyone, anywhere can create a Facebook ad, and yes, there is an “official” screening process before the ads are approved, but some scams and misleading offers still seem to be slipping through the cracks.

So where is Facebook in all of this?

According to Dan Rose, VP for business development at Facebook, the social mega-site’s ad system is still in its beginning stages, similar to when the early versions of Google’s AdWords system were being finely tuned over the past few years.  Rose told The NY Times that yes, their system has some kinks it still needs to work out, but as more legitimate companies continue to sign up and use Facebook as an advertising platform, the overall quality of messages will begin to improve.

And maybe it already has.  With conglomerates like Pepsi and Walmart utilizing Facebook campaigns, the small, misleading ads should start to get pushed out (the Theory of Evolution prevailing yet again).  And, if more people actually utilize Facebook’s “ad-rating system,” which gives members the chance to send feedback directly to Facebook as to why they didn’t like a particular ad – i.e, it was misleading, offensive, irrelevant or repetitive – Facebook can begin to crack down on these ads before users get sucked into their false promises.

But even if the quality of ads improve to the point where every single ad on Facebook adheres to the site’s advertising policy to a T, one fact still remains: the entire system is a little presumptuous by design.  Marketers think that calling out to you with personal information is a draw – even an endearing tactic – but users argue that it’s definitely off-putting, often a nuisance and even sometimes obtrusive.

So is the boundary of personal privacy being pushed a little too far?  Is it being crossed entirely?  Where do sites like Facebook or Google take responsibility?  Do they even owe it to users to protect them from false advertising?

This very issue was a hot-button topic back in June, when Congress held hearings on the subject, and asked executives of Facebook, Google and Yahoo to testify in an effort to boil down their advertising/web-tracking standards.   Soon after, major trade groups in the ad industry announced stricter guidelines on how data can and would be collected and used for advertising purposes.  Many saw through this as a strategic move to fend off impending federal regulations, but their pledges of transparency and self-regulation pleased the courts enough for the time being.

But what steps really are being taken to ensure consumer privacy in a digital setting?  When we sign up for sites like Facebook and share personal information, are we really giving up some of our rights to privacy?  Are these strange, creepy ads a necessary evil of having free access to a site like Facebook?

In a constantly evolving digital world where there are no concrete rules of conduct yet in place, I suppose no one has the answers to these questions either.  Because in a track race between Internet law and new technology, law would be red-faced and panting, getting lapped again and again by the swift, agile and tireless technology.  Who knows if poor old law will ever catch up, but at this point, they’re still miles behind.