Facebook is now providing users with more ad targeting information
- Friday, July 12th, 2019
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Facebook has increased its advertising transparency, providing users with more information about the reasons they have been targeted with an ad and which businesses are utilising personal data.
The ‘Why am I seeing this ad?’ feature has been given more detail beyond just demographic information and information about a website you may have visited. Now, Facebook will highlight the interests or categories that matched the user with an ad, and make it clearer where that information came from. The section also gives the user the options to adjust their ad preferences and to completely opt out of advertising from a specific advertiser.
The social network has also updated its Ad Preferences section, creating an ‘Advertisers and Businesses’ tab. This tab shows the user which advertisers have uploaded a list with their information and used that list to run at least one ad in the past seven days. For businesses, it shows the third parties and businesses which have uploaded and shared lists with the user’s information, highlighting the business that initially uploaded the list and any advertisers that used the list to serve an ad within the last 90 days.
“Whether you’re new to Facebook or have been using it for years, you should be able to easily understand and adjust how your information influences the ads you see,” said Sreethu Thulasi, product manager at Facebook, in a blog post.
“That’s why we introduced tools like ‘Why am I seeing this ad?’ and Ad Preferences over four years ago — to provide greater transparency and control.”