It doesn't seem clear to me that demographic info will make Facebook's ad platform significantly more compelling to advertisers than Google's. Remember Google has a lot of data too (ie search logs).
Back in March 13, 2008 Gladwell claims his story is not true.
See the end of his blog post where he write:
There is a disclaimer at the end of the This American Life broadcast, to the effect that the Moth is a place where "people come to tell both true stories and occasional tall tales." As I think should be obvious if you listen to it, my story definitely belongs to the "tall tale" category. I hope you enjoy it. But please do so with a rather large grain of salt.