Facebook will show users the agencies, partners involved in Custom Audience targeting

Later this month, Facebook will begin showing users who are targeted with ads via Custom Audiences which companies had a hand in their seeing those ads.

What’s changing? With Custom Audiences, advertisers can upload files of customer emails or phone numbers that can then be matched to Facebook accounts for ad targeting.  Starting February 27, the “Why am I seeing this?” info boxes available from ads using Custom Audience targeting may show:

1. The name of the business that uploaded the customer file with the user’s information included
2. Any Custom Audience sharing between businesses such as the agency, Facebook Marketing Partner (FMP) or other partner.
3. The type of information such as email address or phone number uploaded in the Custom Audience file and matched to the user.

Facebook started rolling out “on behalf of” agreements in November. Agencies and FMPs can specify relationships they have with advertisers on the platform.

Why should you care? This change doesn’t have any impact on the Custom Audience Terms, but is part of Facebook’s ongoing efforts to give users a bit more transparency into how their data is used on the platform. Users will have a clearer view into relationships between the advertiser and any third parties that might have access to their data. With these new disclosures comes greater accountability for advertisers, agencies and FMPs targeting users with lists of contact data.

Below is a look at the updated disclosures. The first screenshot is an example of a disclosure when an FMP (Partner) and an agency (B. Holt & Partners) are working on behalf of the advertiser Jasper’s Market. The second screenshot shows the disclosure when the advertiser uploaded the list to their ads account directly.

Facebook will update disclosures to users being targeted with Custom Audiences at the end of February.

About The Author

Ginny Marvin

Ginny Marvin is Third Door Media’s Editor-in-Chief, managing day-to-day editorial operations across all of our publications. Ginny writes about paid online marketing topics including paid search, paid social, display and retargeting for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, she has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.