Meta Platforms Inc, which owns Facebook, said on Monday that it will provide more data on the targeting decisions made by marketers running political and social-issue advertising in its public ad database.
In an expansion of a test that began last year, Meta said it would include specific targeting information for these individual ads in its “Facebook Open Research and Transparency” database utilised by academic researchers.
In a phone interview, Meta’s vice president of business integrity, Jeff King, stated, “Instead of analysing how an ad was delivered by Facebook, it’s really going and looking at an advertiser strategy for what they were trying to do,”
In recent years, the social media behemoth has been pressed to increase transparency regarding targeted advertising on its platforms, particularly during election seasons. Although some academics criticised it for flaws and a lack of specific targeting data, it launched a public ad library in 2018.
The ad library will soon include a summary of targeting information for social issue, electoral, and political advertising placed by a page, according to Meta.
“For example, the Ad Library could show that over the last 30 days, a Page ran 2,000 ads about social issues, elections or politics, and that 40% of their spend on these ads was targeted to ‘people who live in Pennsylvania’ or ‘people who are interested in politics,'” Meta said in a blog post.
The additional information in the ad library will be added in July, according to Meta. The data for vetted researchers will be available at the end of May, with information going back to August 2020, according to the company.
As part of its transparency efforts, the business has launched a number of programmes with outside academics. Last year, it admitted that a technical glitch resulted in faulty data being distributed to academics as part of its “Social Science One” project.
Because of user privacy concerns, the business suspended the accounts of a group of New York University researchers analysing political ads on its platform in 2021.
