How Advertisers and Data Brokers Team Up to Target You on Facebook
You might have seen a headline (or three) these past few months about Facebook discontinuing its Partner Categories program. You had likely never even heard about the program until you learned it was no more. So you likely clicked past those headlines, assuming the news really only mattered to the third-party data brokers who participated. However, as the recent Facebook issues regarding data privacy have reminded us, as users, we must be aware about who has our data and what the companies we interact with do with it.
What exactly do third-party data brokers do?
Yes, they are exactly what you think they are — people who have access to your data and then resell it. You already know Facebook has a lot of data on you. But they only know what happens on their platform — pages visited, posts shared, products liked — or through apps you share with Facebook. Third-party data brokers are companies that have access to lots of data about you, such as purchases, income, vacations and spending habits, and in turn resell it to advertisers on the Facebook platform.
When information from third-party data brokers is combined with Facebook’s data, Facebook has a really good idea of who you are, what you buy and what matters to you. Advertisers then use this information to further target their ads. So if a third-party data broker reports that you buy cat food every month, you may likely start seeing ads about cat toys, cat food and giant kitty condos — even if you never visited a Facebook page about cats, posted a picture of your cat or even mentioned a cat in any post over the past decade on Facebook.
To see all the Advertisers targeting you on Facebook try the following: Go to Settings > Account Settings > Ads > Advertisers You’ve Interacted With and then check out the section called “Advertisers who uploaded a contact list with your info.”
What was the Partner Categories Program and why did it end?
Back in 2013, Facebook launched the program to let data brokers, such as Datalogix, Epsilon, Acxiom, and BlueKai target users for their clients based on categories. And in March, Facebook decided to end the program as a move to improve privacy. As part of the change, Facebook is also no longer going to give brokers anonymized data to help measure results of their campaigns. And no, according to Facebook, this isn’t a temporary move to improve public opinion. Facebook says that eliminating Partner Categories is a permanent change.
So does change mean your data is more protected?
Well, kinda sorta, maybe — a little bit. The main people this affects are the third-party data brokers and advertisers. The data brokers still have the same amount of information about you, but it’s a bit more difficult (though still possible) for advertisers to use it to target you on the platform. Advertisers can now only target ads based on the information collected specifically by Facebook. And it also means that advertisers won’t be able to target ads as narrowly as they have been the past five years. There is a workaround that allows advertisers to partner with these companies outside of the Facebook platform and upload your data as part of a custom audience.
As Facebook continues to be under scrutiny, it’s likely that they will continue to make changes to how it handles data. Keep checking our blog for the latest updates. Each day we sift through the news about data and privacy, then translate the hype into exactly what you need to know to stay in control of your data and privacy.
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