Facebook is doubling down on transparency. There has always been much criticism about the lack of transparency and difficulty in understanding how your information and data influences the ads you see.
Facebook has recently announced updates to their tools for “Why am I seeing this ad?” and Ad Preferences.
In the past, Facebook’s “Why am I seeing this ad?” highlighted one or two of the most relevant reasons, such as basic demographic information or that you may have visited a website. Now, you’ll see more detailed targeting, including interest targeting or categories that matched you with a specific ad. It will also be clearer where that information came from (e.g. the website you may have visited or Page you may have liked), and this will allow users more control to adjust their experience.
Facebook is also updating the Ad Preferences – under User Settings – to show you more about businesses that upload lists with your information, such as an email address or phone number. Here you will locate a tab with two new sections:
- Advertisers who uploaded a list with your information and advertised to it. This section includes advertisers that uploaded a list with your information and used that list to run at least one ad in the past seven days.
- Businesses who uploaded and shared a list with your information. This section aims to help you understand the third parties and businesses who have uploaded and shared lists with your information. In this section, you’ll see the business that initially uploaded a list, along with any advertiser who used that list to serve you an ad within the last 90 days.
Social media platforms like Facebook and others are coming under heavy scrutiny for how they collect and use personal data, we would be expecting more updates similar to these to come.