Meta has shared updates related to its ad transparency tools that will provide more information about advertiser-targeting choices for social issue, electoral and political ads.
The social media major will make detailed targeting information for social issue, electoral or political ads available through the Facebook Open Research and Transparency (FORT) environment.
“We’ve heard from people who rely on our transparency tools that more information about advertisers’ targeting choices is critical to understanding the impact of digital advertising on elections and social discourse,” Jeff King, VP of Business Integrity said in a blog post.
This information will apply for all countries in which the company currently has its ad authorisations and disclaimer tools available.
“At the end of this month, detailed targeting information for social issue, electoral or political ads will be made available to vetted academic researchers through the Facebook Open Research and Transparency (FORT) environment,” King said.
“This data will be provided for each individual ad and will include information like the interest categories chosen by advertisers,” he added.
FORT’s Researcher Platform was created to enable qualified academic researchers to study social media’s impact on society and includes measures to protect people’s privacy.
This is an expansion of its pilot launched last year, which provided targeting information for ads about social issues, elections and politics leading up to the 2020 US election. Data for all social issue, electoral and political ads run globally since August 2020 is now available.
Coming in July, its publicly available Ad Library will also include a summary of targeting information for social issue, electoral or political ads run after launch.
With this update, data on the total number of social issue, electoral and political ads a Page ran using each type of targeting (such as location, demographics and interests) and the percentage of social issue, electoral and political ad spend used to target those options will be available.
It will also include information on whether a Page used Custom Audiences and/or lookalike audiences.
“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 per cent of their spend on these ads was targeted to “people who live in Pennsylvania” or “people who are interested in politics.”,” explained King.
“By making advertiser targeting criteria available for analysis and reporting on ads run about social issues, elections and politics, we hope to help people better understand the practices used to reach potential voters on our technologies. We are committed to providing meaningful transparency, while also protecting people’s privacy,” King said.
“In updating our tools, we solicited advice from external experts in the academic community and civil society on how to best achieve both of these important objectives, and we will continue to do so as we continue to evolve these tools,” King further added.