(Reuters) – Facebook proprietor Meta Platforms Inc will share more data on targeting decisions made by advertisers working political and social-issue adverts in its public ad database, it mentioned on Monday.
Meta mentioned it could additionally embrace detailed targeting data for these particular person adverts in its “Facebook Open Research and Transparency” database utilized by educational researchers, in an enlargement of a pilot launched final 12 months.
“Instead of analyzing how an ad was delivered by Facebook, it is actually going and an advertiser technique for what they had been attempting to do,” mentioned Jeff King, Meta’s vice chairman of enterprise integrity, in a telephone interview.
The social media large has confronted strain in recent times to present transparency round focused promoting on its platforms, notably round elections. In 2018, it launched a public ad library, although some researchers criticized it for glitches and a scarcity of detailed targeting data.
Meta mentioned the ad library will quickly present a abstract of targeting data for social difficulty, electoral or political adverts run by a web page.
“For instance, the Ad Library may present that during the last 30 days, a Page ran 2,000 adverts about social points, elections or politics, and that 40% of their spend on these adverts was focused to ‘individuals who dwell in Pennsylvania’ or ‘people who find themselves taken with politics,'” Meta mentioned in a weblog publish.
Meta mentioned the extra data within the ad library can be added in July. It mentioned the data for vetted researchers can be obtainable on the finish of May and can present data since August 2020.
The firm has run numerous applications with exterior researchers as a part of its transparency efforts. Last 12 months, it mentioned a technical error meant flawed data had been offered to teachers in its “Social Science One” venture.
In 2021, the corporate mentioned it had disabled the accounts of a bunch of New York University researchers learning political adverts on its platform due to person privateness issues.
(Reporting by Elizabeth Culliford in New York; Editing by Aurora Ellis)
