I wonder if this just means they know so much about people from first-party data they've collected (including their share buttons on other sites) that the additional performance gains from third-party data weren't worth much.
> Contact targeting is a LinkedIn Marketing Solutions feature that allows advertisers to upload lists of contacts to include as part of their target audience for ad campaigns. If you have already interacted with a company and provided them with your contact information (e.g. to sign-up for a newsletter or webinar), they may include you in a target audience for a LinkedIn ad campaign using contact targeting.
Twitter's rough equivalent is called "Tailored Audiences," though as far as I know, it relies only on hashed email addresses and device IDs uploaded directly by the advertiser, not data appending companies: https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/ads/audiences/overview
TechCrunch doesn't say exactly what part of Facebook's product will be rolled back - uploading any hashed user lists? hashed user targeting only when done by third-party data appenders? only when based on offline events? - so it's hard to tell how far Facebook is going.
Facebook is still keeping this. If the advertiser provides your info to Facebook they can target you. They are getting rid of the ability to target you based on data Facebook purchases from third parties - e.g. you buy something in a Sephora store, Facebook buys transaction info from your bank/visa/"brokers" and then tags you as "bought beauty in last 30 days", then a brand targets that tag and you see an ad you wouldn't have seen otherwise.
And yes, there's a specific Facebook targeting category for "bought beauty last 30 days", or was before this change.
Everybody has plenty of advertising channels to choose from. If FB suddenly gets more expensive to reach your target customers, the dollars will move elsewhere.
It is actually not that small. Facebook has a lot of info on what you like but relatively few info on what you buy offline. A lot of that data is kept by credit card/reward card companies, which then sell them to Acxiom and others (how nice of them!)
Which is why I don't have one of those but I make myself no illusions about the grocery company being able to track me anyway based on the bank card used to pay for the groceries.
You know how Facebook keeps saying "we never sell your data"? It was bartering it with data brokers all this time.
The only reason they're even taking this step is because they know there are many other companies that could get just as much if not more data about its users as Cambridge Analytica did from the data brokers that partnered with Facebook.
This would be true especially now that the "cat is out of the bag" so potentially many other malicious groups/rival states could be trying to do the same thing as CA did.
Facebook simply saw the inevitable: Cambridge Analytica multiplied by 100 in its future.
But one question remains: has Facebook made sure that the data brokers deleted all of the FB data, and did they just ask them to "certify" this, as they did with CA in 2015, or did FB audit these companies? (as Zuckerberg committed to do recently with all the companies they suspect of abusing its policies?) Did FB audit Palantir, too, and its use of Cambridge Analytica's data?
Not sure what this really means, but it's impressive how many measures FB is publicly taking that seem to improve the privacy of users. Again, not sure if it really does, but it sure makes it seem like it does.
This fact is at the heart of what is wrong with non-FLO software and the whole trend of technology today.
I left Apple (previously only a Mac user) several years ago over this. It's not merely the issue of ads (which is not to be understated, ads are ruinous, at the heart of tons of problems). The way power structures work in these non-FLO walled-gardens amount to an effective sabotage of the entire potential for FLO software overall.
I might catch some flak for saying this, but as a marketer this is a pretty significant change and will make running campaigns more difficult.
Also, I don’t really see how this does much to protect anyone’s privacy, this mostly just makes running effective campaigns more complicated and expensive. The data is still being collected and sold, now you can’t just get it directly through Facebook anymore.
I don't think it is intended to protect users' privacy, indeed it seems to me that it is against Facebook's interest to protect user privacy from advertisers - the platform is primarily valuable to marketers because of the user data that is available to them.
I think by shutting down the marketplace for 3rd party data, Facebook is allowing it to continue elsewhere but also washing their hands a bit, so next time they will have better optics when explaining themselves to regulators if data misuse hits the headlines again.
I think the pixel and first party data is where the real results come from...the third party data was probably on the chopping block long before this CA story...
It will make some marketers feel less in control...but i actually doubt that data actually warranted the additional costs facebook charged for using it.
> I might catch some flak for saying this, but as a marketer this is a pretty significant change and will make running campaigns more difficult.
Excellent.
> Also, I don’t really see how this does much to protect anyone’s privacy, this mostly just makes running effective campaigns more complicated and expensive.
If you don't have access to data you shouldn't have access to that improves privacy. Exchanges leaking data which then gets cached is a huge privacy issue, allowing third parties to link up this data with data they already have is absolutely terrible. Data files in isolation are bad enough, allowing the joining of disjoint datasets is about as bad as it gets when it comes do de-anonymizing people.
> The data is still being collected and sold, now you can’t just get it directly through Facebook anymore.
Good. Not all data will still be available, and hopefully some more of these holes will be closed soon to make it even harder to make running highly targeted campaigns more difficult.
From where I'm sitting the sooner marketeers lose the capability to run targeted campaigns the better, and every little bit helps.
On the plus side: your budgets will go up to reach the same effect so why complain?
I've worked on every single vertical and 3rd party data / Partner Categories is rarely used by big or small advertisers a like.
The cost of the advertising increases i.e. higher CPMs for using this data. I've spent north of $40ml across all digital ads with a large chunk being on $FB and it isn't the main kind of targeting that is used and its the most expensive kind as well.
I am not hugely convinced this will dramatically affect $FB given there are so many other targeting options out there it isn't much of a concern in my eyes just a shame this is one avenue that will now be closed but its one of so many marketers can use.
I think in 1000 years Google search might be akin to the invention of the wheel in its impact on society. I’m not sure how Facebook will be viewed, but I don’t really see its benefit. I certainly don’t get anything out of the deal.
To a first approximation, every employee at google works in advertising. Google search is at its heart a publishing source for serving ads. If every one in advertising loses their job google search goes away.
> I hope you weren't expecting any sympathy. A camera in our bathroom would also make it easier for you to suggest us a "better" shampoo, but no thanks.
Are you suggesting that I shouldn't be allowed to give companies this data if I choose? Because that's what it sounds like when I read this but I'm not sure, and I'd like to be clear about what you are saying and not make any assumption.
You should be able to give it to them with informed consent. Companies should not allowed to trick you into giving it to them by hiding "consent" deep in some document that no one will ever read.
Its _almost_ like, and tell me if I'm crazy here, that Facebook may prefer making changes that benefit it while _appearing_ as if it were benefiting consumers.
Like surface-level changes that look good in a congressional hearing but actually just raise prices and increase ad-spending to maintain the same result.
I believe this is related to GDPR, which isn't clear in the article.
This is the information from Facebook (via Dennis Yu from Blitz Metrics):
// from Facebook:
Although I have spoken with many of you just today and yesterday, I wanted to make you immediately aware of an update we received to third-party targeting, late this afternoon.
We have a responsibility for the use of data on our platform - and we want to ensure that people have transparency and control over how their information is used. Over the past week, we announced important changes to reduce the amount of data that apps can request from users and ensure that people have more control over their information on Facebook. Now, to build on these efforts, we are going to be more restrictive in the way that we use data for advertising on our platform, particularly as it relates to information from third-party data providers.
Specifically, over the next six months, we will remove the ability to use Partner Categories, a targeting solution that enables third-party data providers to offer their targeting directly on Facebook. While leveraging third-party data is a common industry practice and we've put good protections in place, we believe this step will help improve people's privacy on Facebook.
We understand this may impact your advertising efforts on our platform, and we will work with you through this transition. In an attempt to minimize disruption, we will allow time for you to update your targeting. In light of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union, we have created a timeline to comply with the regulation:
· May 10: After this date, you will no longer be able to create or edit campaign using Partner Categories built on audiences from the UK, Germany, and France; however, they will be allowed to continue running until May 24.
· May 25: We will no longer deliver to Partner Categories built on audiences from the UK, Germany, and France, and these targeting options will no longer be available for use on our platform. You will notified to update any targeting containing impacted Partner Categories before this date.
· June 30: Last day for creating new or editing existing campaigns using non-EU Partner Categories; they will be allowed to run until September 30.
· October 1: All other Partner Categories will no longer be available as targeting options on our platform and we will stop delivering against these audiences. You will be notified to update your targeting by this date.
Protecting people’s information is the most important thing we do. You can expect to hear more from us in the coming weeks as we continue to work to make our platform safer.
It's a step in the right direction, but still I don't trust Facebook making a decision like that. In the end they'll just replace it with something else which might turn out even worse than before. You cannot make money selling user data by cutting off data channels to your third party customer base. So, I'm waiting. Off Facebook.
I would assume the issue was that they had to give these companies data in order to match up a facebook user with an ID in the third party systems. See, for example, BlueKai's integration documentation: https://docs.oracle.com/en/cloud/saas/data-cloud/dsmkt/integ...
Pfff, so? These companies have the data already, and if not, they have long 6 months to get them. This only tells me that Facebook is trying to act as we wish to yet acting as it always did.
After Facebook now Namo App user data is not safe — Big privacy Concern
After the viral exposure of loopholes in the Aadhaar security system in January’17 now it’s all about the Namo app it is being claimed that the application shares private information of its users with third party companies without their consent.
Read it : https://www.ica.in/newsroom/namo-app-sharing-user-data
This is a fairly major change, and will have some fairly significant impacts on the AdTech industry. I'd go as far as saying this was the first really meaningful fallout from the CA scandal.
I'd hazard a guess that not many ordinary users are even aware that retailers can upload their email addresses into Facebook and create targeting segments from them.
As to what these changes do to the AdTech industry is anyone's guess. 'Onboarding' email addresses is basically LiveRamp's business model.
I highly doubt this had anything to do with CA, outside of some PR timing... third party data is stale and expensive and advertisers were already complaining of costs on FB... this will make it cheaper for mom and pop advertisers and scare away the affiliate marketers mostly.. facebooks owm data and first party audience data is still open season and where the ad dollar shift has been happening anyways...
This was a smart biz decision and CA was just a convenient opportunity to roll out without too much backlash IMHO.
that's not what is being removed. It's 3rd party data that FB is purchasing not, that advertisers are providing through Custom Audiences for Lookalikes.
Honestly, I think this is a fallout of third party data being too expensive relative to the increase in performance more than anything else... middleware ad tech and data sellers are a failed experiment that has been a net negative for advertisers, users and publishers..all it did was just enrich some bloated ad tech startups to steal a piece of the pie...its a scam that floated on smoke and mirror attribution models...and advertisers who actually control their budgets have smartened up finally...its artificially propped up by agencies incentivized to spend more and make their clients look good in a powerpoint and colorful excel sheet...without true accountability to REALITY!
I think we will see many more hits to the third party data world and ad tech that promises richer targeting without really serving the users or advertisers by enabling them to deliver better value...versus just paying twice for customers they would have anyways short of the third party selling your customers to your competitors...its a shell game and its finally coming crashing down!!! GOOD RIDDANCE!
One possible conspiracy... Facebook stock has dropped a bunch, site usage is down 24% and advertisers are leaving left and right... anounce these audience segments will be gone in 6 months but advertisers can A, reach them now and B, build first party audiences off this data by advertising to specific segments just to cookie folks... and the next two earnings calls show a big increase in ad spend!
Facebook is to me a clear case, where missing company values created a huge mess. What are the core values/core beliefs of Facebook? I firmly believe that other than anything else a set of core values determines the long term fate of companies. Of course, it’s not enough to merely have a set of beliefs that you’ve put up nicely on the wall, but, rather, top management must speak and act according to these principles.
129 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 194 ms ] threadFor the amount of data Facebook collects, the quality of advertising they provide is pretty much garbage. Late night tv infomercial quality.
> Contact targeting is a LinkedIn Marketing Solutions feature that allows advertisers to upload lists of contacts to include as part of their target audience for ad campaigns. If you have already interacted with a company and provided them with your contact information (e.g. to sign-up for a newsletter or webinar), they may include you in a target audience for a LinkedIn ad campaign using contact targeting.
It's part of "Matched Audiences": https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/81195
Twitter's rough equivalent is called "Tailored Audiences," though as far as I know, it relies only on hashed email addresses and device IDs uploaded directly by the advertiser, not data appending companies: https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/ads/audiences/overview
TechCrunch doesn't say exactly what part of Facebook's product will be rolled back - uploading any hashed user lists? hashed user targeting only when done by third-party data appenders? only when based on offline events? - so it's hard to tell how far Facebook is going.
And yes, there's a specific Facebook targeting category for "bought beauty last 30 days", or was before this change.
If you're correct, the part they're rolling back is relatively small.
I would not be surprised if this thing is undone later.
The only reason they're even taking this step is because they know there are many other companies that could get just as much if not more data about its users as Cambridge Analytica did from the data brokers that partnered with Facebook.
This would be true especially now that the "cat is out of the bag" so potentially many other malicious groups/rival states could be trying to do the same thing as CA did.
Facebook simply saw the inevitable: Cambridge Analytica multiplied by 100 in its future.
But one question remains: has Facebook made sure that the data brokers deleted all of the FB data, and did they just ask them to "certify" this, as they did with CA in 2015, or did FB audit these companies? (as Zuckerberg committed to do recently with all the companies they suspect of abusing its policies?) Did FB audit Palantir, too, and its use of Cambridge Analytica's data?
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/27/palantir-worked-with-cambrid...
Great tactical game by Facebook.
I left Apple (previously only a Mac user) several years ago over this. It's not merely the issue of ads (which is not to be understated, ads are ruinous, at the heart of tons of problems). The way power structures work in these non-FLO walled-gardens amount to an effective sabotage of the entire potential for FLO software overall.
Also, I don’t really see how this does much to protect anyone’s privacy, this mostly just makes running effective campaigns more complicated and expensive. The data is still being collected and sold, now you can’t just get it directly through Facebook anymore.
I think by shutting down the marketplace for 3rd party data, Facebook is allowing it to continue elsewhere but also washing their hands a bit, so next time they will have better optics when explaining themselves to regulators if data misuse hits the headlines again.
It will make some marketers feel less in control...but i actually doubt that data actually warranted the additional costs facebook charged for using it.
Excellent.
> Also, I don’t really see how this does much to protect anyone’s privacy, this mostly just makes running effective campaigns more complicated and expensive.
If you don't have access to data you shouldn't have access to that improves privacy. Exchanges leaking data which then gets cached is a huge privacy issue, allowing third parties to link up this data with data they already have is absolutely terrible. Data files in isolation are bad enough, allowing the joining of disjoint datasets is about as bad as it gets when it comes do de-anonymizing people.
> The data is still being collected and sold, now you can’t just get it directly through Facebook anymore.
Good. Not all data will still be available, and hopefully some more of these holes will be closed soon to make it even harder to make running highly targeted campaigns more difficult.
From where I'm sitting the sooner marketeers lose the capability to run targeted campaigns the better, and every little bit helps.
On the plus side: your budgets will go up to reach the same effect so why complain?
I've worked on every single vertical and 3rd party data / Partner Categories is rarely used by big or small advertisers a like.
The cost of the advertising increases i.e. higher CPMs for using this data. I've spent north of $40ml across all digital ads with a large chunk being on $FB and it isn't the main kind of targeting that is used and its the most expensive kind as well.
I am not hugely convinced this will dramatically affect $FB given there are so many other targeting options out there it isn't much of a concern in my eyes just a shame this is one avenue that will now be closed but its one of so many marketers can use.
I will definitely catch a bunch of flak for this, but I hope it contributes to all people working in advertising (including you) loosing their jobs.
Poor thing.
I hope you weren't expecting any sympathy. A camera in our bathroom would also make it easier for you to suggest us a "better" shampoo, but no thanks.
>>this mostly just makes running effective campaigns more complicated and expensive.
Again, that's your problem.
>>The data is still being collected and sold, now you can’t just get it directly through Facebook anymore.
Until the outrage hits a tipping point.
Are you suggesting that I shouldn't be allowed to give companies this data if I choose? Because that's what it sounds like when I read this but I'm not sure, and I'd like to be clear about what you are saying and not make any assumption.
Am I risking jail time or just a fine? :)
You should read somewhere else regarding permissions, default settings for 99%of users and "I agree" when it's a leave or take.
Like surface-level changes that look good in a congressional hearing but actually just raise prices and increase ad-spending to maintain the same result.
This is the information from Facebook (via Dennis Yu from Blitz Metrics):
// from Facebook:
Although I have spoken with many of you just today and yesterday, I wanted to make you immediately aware of an update we received to third-party targeting, late this afternoon.
We have a responsibility for the use of data on our platform - and we want to ensure that people have transparency and control over how their information is used. Over the past week, we announced important changes to reduce the amount of data that apps can request from users and ensure that people have more control over their information on Facebook. Now, to build on these efforts, we are going to be more restrictive in the way that we use data for advertising on our platform, particularly as it relates to information from third-party data providers.
Specifically, over the next six months, we will remove the ability to use Partner Categories, a targeting solution that enables third-party data providers to offer their targeting directly on Facebook. While leveraging third-party data is a common industry practice and we've put good protections in place, we believe this step will help improve people's privacy on Facebook.
We understand this may impact your advertising efforts on our platform, and we will work with you through this transition. In an attempt to minimize disruption, we will allow time for you to update your targeting. In light of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union, we have created a timeline to comply with the regulation:
· May 10: After this date, you will no longer be able to create or edit campaign using Partner Categories built on audiences from the UK, Germany, and France; however, they will be allowed to continue running until May 24.
· May 25: We will no longer deliver to Partner Categories built on audiences from the UK, Germany, and France, and these targeting options will no longer be available for use on our platform. You will notified to update any targeting containing impacted Partner Categories before this date.
· June 30: Last day for creating new or editing existing campaigns using non-EU Partner Categories; they will be allowed to run until September 30.
· October 1: All other Partner Categories will no longer be available as targeting options on our platform and we will stop delivering against these audiences. You will be notified to update your targeting by this date.
Protecting people’s information is the most important thing we do. You can expect to hear more from us in the coming weeks as we continue to work to make our platform safer.
All of those things are being asked by adtech lawyers right now in planning for the future EU data regimes.
[0] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mark_Zuckerberg
And of course you can down vote, but we will meet again in the next Facebook scandal :)
After the viral exposure of loopholes in the Aadhaar security system in January’17 now it’s all about the Namo app it is being claimed that the application shares private information of its users with third party companies without their consent. Read it : https://www.ica.in/newsroom/namo-app-sharing-user-data
I'd hazard a guess that not many ordinary users are even aware that retailers can upload their email addresses into Facebook and create targeting segments from them.
As to what these changes do to the AdTech industry is anyone's guess. 'Onboarding' email addresses is basically LiveRamp's business model.
This was a smart biz decision and CA was just a convenient opportunity to roll out without too much backlash IMHO.