>"I would target the shit out of you for Volvo, Volkswagen, Acura, Infiniti, Mercedes, BMW and Audi."
And why not Lincoln, Cadillac, Lexus, Saab and Jaguar? In fact, Volkswagen isn't a luxury brand (no more than Honda, Nissan, Toyota), and hardly fits among the brands you mentioned above. Yet it's a preference of the OP. So, I think you've proven his point; your targeting hardly tells us anything.
Sure, maybe those too. Except perhaps Saab, which last I heard was broke, and Jaguar, which I'd probably target at a slightly older crowd.
Lincoln and Cadillac maybe not, too -- perhaps Americans who holiday in Europe are much more likely to buy European cars. If I had more data I could draw up some correlations and tell you exactly how much more likely they are to buy European cars and whether it's still worth waving a shiny new MKZ in front of our Volvo fan.
There's always exceptions to any of these correlations between stuff we like and other stuff we might like. In fact we're all exceptions; we all like things which are anticorrelated with other things we like. But that's not a big problem -- your targeting algorithm doesn't have to be perfect, it just has to be significantly better than random scattershot... and ideally, better than Google.
In an ideal world, I'd only serve Acura ads to people who:
a) Are buying a new car soon
b) Are certain to buy an Acura if they see an ad for one, and
c) Are certain to not buy an Acura if they don't see an ad for one.
but failing that I'll settle for targeting people who are in vaguely the right age group and income bracket.
Actually, I think car sales are a bad example; if I wanted to sell cars I'd use google ads, because people buying a new car already know they're buying a new car, and are probably out there doing research on the subject of new cars. Whoever posted the milkshake example had the right idea for facebook ads.
Google ads can sell you stuff that you're looking for, Facebook ads (if implemented properly) can sell you stuff you don't yet know that you want.
And why not Lincoln, Cadillac, Lexus, Saab and Jaguar? In fact, Volkswagen isn't a luxury brand (no more than Honda, Nissan, Toyota), and hardly fits among the brands you mentioned above. Yet it's a preference of the OP. So, I think you've proven his point; your targeting hardly tells us anything.