By Sreethu Thulasi, Product Manager
Whether you’re new to Facebook or have been using it for years, you should be able to easily understand and adjust how your information influences the ads you see.
That’s why we introduced tools like “Why am I seeing this ad?” and Ad Preferences over four years ago — to provide greater transparency and control. We made updates to these tools recently, but we heard feedback from people that they can still be hard to understand and difficult to navigate. Today we’re making two additional changes to address those concerns.
First, we’ll show people more reasons why they’re seeing an ad on Facebook. In the past, “Why am I seeing this ad?” highlighted one or two of the most relevant reasons, such as demographic information or that you may have visited a website. Now, you’ll see more detailed targeting, including the interests or categories that matched you with a specific ad. It will also be clearer where that information came from (e.g. the website you may have visited or Page you may have liked), and we’ll highlight controls you can use to easily adjust your experience.
We’re also updating Ad Preferences to show you more about businesses that upload lists with your information, such as an email address or phone number. You’ll now see a tab with two sections:
- Advertisers who uploaded a list with your information and advertised to it. This section includes advertisers that uploaded a list with your information and used that list to run at least one ad in the past seven days. For example, a fitness studio that uploaded a list of client emails and used that for advertising could show up in this section.
- Businesses who uploaded and shared a list with your information. This section aims to help you understand the third parties and businesses who have uploaded and shared lists with your information. In this section, you’ll see the business that initially uploaded a list, along with any advertiser who used that list to serve you an ad within the last 90 days.
We’re continuing to work to make ads more transparent and easier for you to control. To learn more about “Why am I seeing this ad?” visit our Help Center. To view and use your controls, visit Ad Preferences.