Google and Yahoo target search ads based on mere keywords. How passé! Facebook's targeted ads, which draw on the personal information users enter into their profiles, are clearly the future, right? If only the company's engineers could competently write the code that targets those ads. A Facebook advertiser who has spent thousands of dollars on campaigns targeted by age and country says that the site's new reporting tools for advertisers have exposed a serious problem: Either the targeting routines are broken, or the reporting is completely off. An ad meant for U.K. teens went mostly to the U.S. and other European countries instead. A campaign meant to be placed in front of Irish users saw 1 in 14 ads go elsewhere. It's a poor reflection on Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, whose expertise in running Google's automated ad systems was touted as her main qualification for the job. Here are screenshots of some of the advertisers' reports:

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