Advertising and our Third-Party Partners
Earlier this year we announced that Facebook would be working with select third-party partners to build targeting features for marketers to reach their customers with relevant ads. We mentioned how we've designed these partnerships with people's privacy in mind and how people using Facebook continue to have control over the ads they see. We want to take this opportunity to provide more details on these partnerships and the ways in which our partners have agreed to help us drive greater transparency and control.
Many businesses today work with third parties such as Acxiom, Datalogix, and Epsilon to help manage and understand their marketing efforts. For example, an auto dealer may want to customize an offer to people who are likely to be in the market for a new car. The dealer also might want to send offers, like discounts for service, to customers that have purchased a car from them. To do this, the auto dealer works with a third-party company to identify and reach those customers with the right offer.
As part of working with Facebook, we've set up these partnerships in a way that people who use Facebook can understand how this advertising works and have the ability to control it. Specifically, our partners have committed to take the following steps to increase transparency and control:
Inline Transparency. When you see a Facebook ad, you can click the dropdown menu and then choose "About this Ad." This will bring you to a page that identifies the company that was responsible for including you in the audience for the ad -- whether that company is Facebook or one of our partners. We also provide a centralized list on our own site of the third parties we work with to help us with advertising and with other efforts, such as measuring the effectiveness of Facebook ads. See here: https://www.facebook.com/help/133547810119620/
Comprehensive Control. Within the dropdown box associated with an ad, you can ask Facebook not to show you that ad again, or not to show you any ads from that partner. Partners also have agreed to provide on their "About this ad" page a comprehensive opt-out of future targeting by that company, not only on one website, but across the web.
Enhanced Disclosures. Our partners have agreed to expand their public knowledge centers so that anyone can learn how they collect and use information. This includes clearly explaining what types of information they collect and what their policies are relating to the sharing of that information.
Data Access Tools. Finally, each of our partners is working to develop tools that will help people see audience segment information that the partner has associated with them, and to exercise control over that data. These tools are new to the industry, and we hope they'll meaningfully improve the transparency people have into how information is used to help them see relevant ads. As a part of its decision to partner with Facebook, the first of our partners, Acxiom, has already announced that it will be launching this new tool. We look forward to working with our other partners to make similar tools available in the coming months.
We're pleased that our partners have committed to work with us to improve people's experience with ads on Facebook and across the web. We will continue to provide information about how our ads work on the About Ads page: https://www.facebook.com/about/ads/
