In its first-ever advertising, PrivatizeMe LLC, Durham, N.C., targets seven disparate social sectors with little in common... other than a preference not to be targeted at all. They are: gun enthusiasts; porn consumers; college-or-higher-educated African Americans; people with STDs; people with personal hygiene issues; survivalists; and the LGBT. Ads for an eighth target market, the overweight, were rejected and did not run. PrivatizeMe is a browser add-on that removes cookies, making the attention-averse and their web histories invisible to and unreachable by the sites they visit.

The Twitter campaign was created by advertising agency The Republik, Durham, and media, in the form of paid Tweets, is managed by the client. The ads are in two formats, both of which are intended to address the viewer with discomforting directness. The first, "You forgot...," is in the form of a digital shopping cart with some typically private item for purchase. The second, "You fit...," is a stark, all-type summation of the viewer's profile.

Starting this year, the client initiated serial ad buys for target audiences considered likely to value privacy, and then refocused on those audiences with higher response rates. Gun enthusiasts, for which the campaign has run both profile- and shopping cart-format ads, have had the highest response rate of any group. Porn consumers (shopping cart) have been second highest. The most recent ad, the profile-format "You have E.D.," broke this month.

Creative credits go to The Republik creative director Robert Shaw West; associate creative director Matt Shapiro; and art director/copywriter George Lauinger. Additional design work was done by London-based Robert Burke.

PrivatizeMe is more reliable than voluntary "Do Not Track" settings, and provides privacy that Chrome "Incognito" and Safari "Private Browsing" modes do not. (They make your history invisible on your computer, but not to the sites you visit.) PrivatizeMe is free to the user. It sells advertising based only on the user's current search term and broad geographic location. www.privatizeme.com

The Republik is a Durham-based, employee-owned advertising / branding agency. Clients include PrivatizeMe, Fayetteville Area CVB, 21C Museum Hotel, Boy Scouts of America Oconeechee Council, First Flight Venture Center, Lexis Nexis and The Franklin. www.therepublik.net