Facebook is now a lot more transparent with its users
About a year ago, Facebook added a section onto their ads that provided users a better understanding of why they were being targeted that specific ad. Even though users were getting information about the lists they were in, they still had to be stuck in that list. Facebook listened, and as of January 2020, Facebook is becoming even more transparent with its users.
You’ll now be able to get yourself out of a list used for Facebook targeting
Previously, Facebook tried to show users why they were seeing ads in their feed, but the information provided was very limited. Now, you’ll get more detail into why you’re being shown the ads AND you’ll actually be able to opt-out of any ad campaigns run by companies that have your information.
If you want to see the business that has uploaded and shared a list with your information, you’re actually now able to view this in your Facebook Ad Preferences. You need to go to your ad settings > advertisers and business to see the companies that have uploaded a list with your info and advertised to it. See below for mine:
I was seriously surprised that there were 209 advertisers where my information was used to target me. I will note that a lot of these advertisers are companies that I like and don’t mind being targeted to, but I still couldn’t believe how many lists I was in!
You can also see other interesting things like businesses who have uploaded and shared a list with your info, advertisers whose ads you clicked, and your interests (how you’re targeted when using interest based targeting).
💡 Pro Tip: As a reminder, you are able to change your ad settings and opt-out of seeing ads based on data from partners and ads based on your activity on Facebook Company Products that you see elsewhere.
This is great for Facebook users, but how is this going to affect my ad campaigns?
This is great for your every day Facebook user who is tired of seeing irrelevant ads pop up on their feed all the time or wants to just understand why they’re getting targeted. As advertisers, this change will most likely affect our campaigns… For the better. This might be an unpopular opinion, but as an advertiser, I’m excited about this update.
The days are over where you are targeted millions of people who may or may not be interested in your ads. Why are you wasting money on showing your ads to these people? If someone opts out of being in your list, great! Why would you want someone in your retargeting list that doesn’t want to be there? They’re not interested in your business or service, so they should get out of that list ASAP and give you those ad dollars back to spend on the users who are actually interested in your product or service.
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