Facebook Data Breach?

This past week we learned that a data company allegedly used data from over 50 million Facebook users against their guidelines and terms of service. This has resulted in this company being banned from serving ads here in the future.

All of this activity has renewed calls from some to have Facebook’s role in data collection and selling for advertising purposes. As many know by now, Facebook’s targeted advertising platform is one of the best in the industry. At Prestige Marketing Advisors, our advertising division uses Facebook as a piece of the pie because it is so successful.

There are certainly some things they could clean up amidst the congressional investigation into election manipulation in the UK and here in the US. Facebook has made several strides recently to address ad content, as well as firming up it’s ad purchasing guidelines.

What makes Facebook such an effective ad partner is the fact that it’s data is second to none. It is all first party information, meaning it is information that the subjects of the data profile volunteered the information themselves it wasn’t taken through second or third hand sources. By using this first part data advertisers can confidently target people by age or any demographic imaginable with a very high degree of certainty.

When this data is misused, advertisers have access to personal information that has not authorized for use. What was alleged in this past week’s report was that private data not to be used for advertising was illicitly collected and used for campaign ads. This breach will help identify fixes that can be performed in the future to prevent anything like this from happening again

Overall they have data that is some of the most secure in today’s marketplace and should continue to be an effective ad strategy. For more reading see below, and to discuss your future ad campaigns contact us for a free consultation.

More reading:

Guardian

Money.CNN

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