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FORTUNE.COM // APR.1.19
The changes have hurt —but have not
crippled—the effectiveness of Facebook’s
ads because there are ways clever ad-tech
specialists can combine Facebook’s data with
third-party data. “As these changes took place,
we had to renavigate a little bit,” says Laura
Joukovski, chief media officer at TechStyle
Fashion Group, an online retailer.
Facebook believes one way to improve trust
on the part of users is to help them better un-
derstand Facebook itself. The theory is that if
consumers understand how ads work, they’ll
continue to view them as a positive aspect
of the Facebook experience. “Consumers—
and it’s not their fault—do not understand
how digital advertising works,” says Carolyn
Everson, vice president of global marketing
solutions. One of the ways Facebook is trying
to shed light on its advertising model is by
letting users click on individual ads to find out
why they’re being put in front of them. But the
“Why am I seeing this?” button doesn’t go into
much detail, providing cursory information
such as suggesting a retailer wants to reach
people of a certain age in a given location.
Facebook says it is still working out the kinks
to the “Why am I seeing this?” feature and is
in the process of allowing for much greater
transparency and data controls. For example,
it has announced it will offer a Clear History
button that gives users the ability to erase
their activity, much as web browser software
has allowed for years.
The tweaks add up to just enough changes,
more grist for the argument that Facebook is
adapting—but only as little as possible.I
IF FACEBOOK DOES CHANGE in more fundamental
ways, it will be because it has to, not because
it wants to. In 2020, the first-ever state
data-privacy law will take effect in California,
unless Congress can hurriedly pass a law to
preempt it nationwide. The so-called Cali-
fornia Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is one
of the most stringent sets of rules that could
soon put unprecedented restrictions on Face-
book and companies like it. The law would
give consumers much more control over their
data, allowing them to see what online infor-additional data has come from Facebook
itself, via new features like Facebook Live, its
live-streaming video service, or the launch
of Reactions, a more nuanced version of the
Like button that allows users to express love,
sadness, anger, and other emotional responses
to content on the platform. (The videos that
users watch and their reactions to all sorts of
content can tell marketers a lot about who
they are.) But the company also accumulated
all sorts of other data sources from third-party
providers eager to share the spoils. Facebook
proved unable to control how the mix of third-
party information and its own data got used,
such as when political researcher Cambridge
Analytica violated Facebook’s rules, the com-
pany says, to harvest and act on Facebook user
profiles.
The ensuing firestorm began to chip away
at Facebook’s credibility—even with the mar-
keters who get so much value from the ads
they buy on its platform. Facebook then hurt
more than its reputation when it decided to
cut off the third-party data providers. “They
really shot themselves in the foot,” says Allen
Finn, a marketing specialist with online ad-
vertising consultancy WordStream. “They’ve
dampened the ability to do ad targeting fol-
lowing Cambridge Analytica.”
CONTENT COP:
Mike Schroep-
fer, Facebook’s
chief technology
officer, onstage
at Facebook’s F8
developers con-
ference in San
Jose in 2017.
Facebook is de-
ploying artificial
intelligence to
help root out un-
wanted content
from its sites.