Facebook have unveiled plans to specifically target households with ads or, more to the point, the decision makers in a particular home.

In a move seen by many as another attempt to steal TV network’s ad dollars, Facebook says its new household audience feature will allow brands to target whole families based on their social media profiles.

Apparently, the new algorithm will allow Facebook to work out a family’s make-up and deduce from social media post “signals” who the mum, dad and the kids are – targeting each demographic appropriately or all together.

Facebook will be able to determine who is who by the frequency of check-ins, posts and where they accessed the internet.

The tool will be able to determine who the decision makers in the home are and who are the purchasers. For example, it might be the kids determining where the next family holiday is, while it’ll be the parents paying for it. Likewise, the wife might be looking at fashion items online, which could make a surprise birthday present from the husband.

In the past it’s always been believed if you wanted to target a family – or the grocery buying mum, as an example – then TV was your best way of doing it.

Allegedly, the new tech will also stop the retargeting of ads for something you’ve already searched for and purchased online.

Facebook is also adding additional measurement capabilities that appear in the Ads Reporting dashboard and show how a campaign has performed in terms of driving results across members of a household.

Speaking of the new innovation, Facebook’s product marketing director, Graham Mudd said: “What we want to do basically is leverage the power of our network to enable that kind of influencing or to support that kind of influencing across the family.” His comments reported on the US industry website AdWeek.