Have you ever wondered why are you seeing a specific ad in your Facebook Newsfeed? Not surprising, the platform’s targeting options can be scarily accurate. Not to worry, the good news is, not only I’m going to tell you how to know why you received that specific ad, this article will also give you tips on how to control personal information used by advertisers for targeting purpose.
But before that, let’s have a quick run through of how Facebook collect users’ data, shall we?
There are 4 main categories of data that Facebook offers to its advertisers in order for them to create the most accurate target audiences for their social media promotion.
– 1st party data: 1st party data is collected by the advertiser itself. It usually is in the form of email list, but could also be phone numbers, name, zip code, etc. This data could come from loyalty cards, newsletter subscription, current customers, lapsed customers or users who entered a competition for example. The advertiser is able to upload this list of users within the Facebook platform to cross-match the information with Facebook users and create a personalised audience. This data will only be used by the advertiser itself, and will not be available in free access to other advertisers.
1st party data also covers information collected on the advertiser’s website through a Facebook pixel, such as specific page you visited, time you spent on their website, previous purchases you made etc.
– 2nd party data: The category most commonly used due to its simplicity. Facebook collects data from its platform directly, based on profile information and users’ behaviour on the platform. It could be your age, gender, city, a place your checked-in to, pages you or your friends like, but also articles you click and videos you watch.
– 3rd party data: Facebook also works closely with data provider companies, such as Axiom, Oracle, or Experian. These companies specialty is to buy and collect data based on online and offline behaviour. In short, let’s say that you recently bought diapers in the supermarket and used your loyalty card to pay, these companies will then be able to collect that data to put you in the categories ‘Parents of 0 to 5 years old’. It’s a very rough explanation, which has a lot of caveat according who you gave your information to and if you allowed them to use it with their partners, but it gives you an illustration of how third party data work.
– Location: The last one I can think of is your location. According to where you connect to the platform, Facebook can use information like your IP address, your GPS coordinates (if you have it turned on on your phone) or your declared location on Facebook/Instagram profiles to serve ads from advertisers trying to reach specific areas (e.g: someone close from their shop).
Ok, enough geeky data talk and let’s get to the main point of this article. How can I see why I received an ad and control my ad preference? Very easy, and pretty cool, explanation in images:
I just opened my Facebook, and this is the first ad I’ve seen (my interests are very narrowed: webmarketing and travel, no kidding I started freelancing):
There are many reasons why I could have seen that advert, but I’m curious to see how Easyjet build they target audiences.
Click on the drop-down menu in the right up corner and select ‘Why am I seeing this?’
Here, I can see that Easyjet wanted to target people interested in Trivago (a hotel comparator), which I either follow on Facebook, or recently clicked on some of their content. On top of that, I’m correctly aged between 18 and 55 and live in the UK. Well done Facebook!
So here is the secret of why you specifically have seen this ad. This is how Facebook knows that you are single and lonely on a Saturday night and use this to serve you a dating app ad (absolutely not talking from personal experience…).
But wait, it gets cooler! Wanna see the full list of interest that Facebook associates with you? Click on the ‘Manage Your Advert Preferences’ link in the previous grab. (Am I the only one wondering why the unnecessary use of capital letters at the beginning of each word?)
This is where you enter the magical world of the hidden Facebook. Learn everything about yourself exploring all the data that Facebook collected about you through the years. Warning: you mind find some very random interests in there. While ‘Asos’ and ‘Netflix’ make complete sense in my case, under the section ‘Hobbies and activities’, I can find that I have a passion about ‘litter boxes’ and ‘months’, who knows…
You can also explore the list of advertisers you’ve interacted with (who have your info, whose website you visited, or app you used, or ad you clicked), your profile information and demographic categories you’ve been associated with (I am for instance a ‘frequent international traveller’).
In this section, you can remove any interest that you don’t think is relevant to you to avoid receiving unwanted ads, but also control which information can be used by advertisers to serve you ads.
Told you that was pretty cool!
To understand better how Facebook ads work, follow this link:
https://www.facebook.com/ads/about/?entry_product=ad_preferences