In the wake of a business scandal, there is always blowback for customers, clients and stakeholders. As your advisors on all matters that may affect your business we, at In Marketing We Trust have looked into a few large-scale changes that will be happening for advertisers on Facebook. Facebook and Cambridge Analytica will surely have bulldosed its way onto your TVs and Inboxes and news feeds.
This despite an executive – in an effort to calm the stock price – mentioning to The Wall Street Journal that “We have not seen wild changes in behaviour with people saying ‘I’m not going to share any data with Facebook anymore,’”.
Facebook and GDPR
So you may think that there will be no major changes to our advertising ability. However, this scandal is coinciding with GDPR now enforceable from May 25th, 2018. With Facebook already in the firing range, GDPR regulators will be watching closely to determine Facebook’s status.
With GDPR, Facebook has begun to make changes to it’s advertising and privacy policies, which will require a number of changes from you and us in order to remain above board. Remember, despite GDPR being a European regulation, it will affect all businesses with customers, or website users inside the EU. Regardless of whether or not you have offices or are based there.
Our breakdown of the new T&Cs
- “You (or partners acting on your behalf) may not place pixels associated with your Business Manager or ad account on websites that you do not own without our written permission”
- What this means for you: Sharing any pixels across Business Managers and even ad accounts will not be allowed. We’ll need access to your ad accounts in order to even look at your pixel data.
- “If you have a pixel on your site, you must clearly warn and advise users that you are collecting information.”
- Any web page with a pixel must have a clear notification of the fact a visitor’s data is being collected.
- This notification must include a link to a place where they can “Opt-out” of having the data collected
- I.E. There must not be a pixel activated until the visitor has given them consent.
- “People who manage Pages with large numbers of followers will need to be verified. Those who manage large Pages that do not clear the process will no longer be able to post. This will make it much harder for people to administer a Page using a fake account”
- No more business accounts for managing the page, ads and groups. All large pages will need to have real personal accounts linked to them.
Further steps Facebook is taking in response to the Cambridge Analytica breach
- Facebook kills third party data providers Experian, Acxiom and Oracle. All the partner categories used to enrich or target user groups provided by third parties will no longer be available.
- Facebook is working on an app to verify that custom audiences uploaded via email list or integration was collected correctly
- I.E. An audience list you have that doesn’t have any data like Opt-in time/date won’t be allowed to be uploaded and used as a custom audience anymore.
Our recommendations
As your agency partner, we are recommending we make a large push towards collection of first-party data from Facebook before our options become limited. Moving as much of your Facebook audience to owned properties will set you up well for the uncertain times ahead.
As GDPR is reasonably open to interpretation at this point, it is hard to say whatever features especially in the use of Pixels and custom audiences will still be available for use.
Marketing strategies we recommend are:
- Shifting or increasing focus on contact acquisition – Securing as many owned and opted-in emails as possible
- Use Audience Interest targeting on FB and Instagram to lead ad format
- Build remarketing lists and retarget for second opt-in on Landing page
Let us know if you need any more guidance or have questions regarding GDPR – we will soon be releasing an App that will assist in housing your data and clearly explaining the requirements not just for Facebook but for all your data collection efforts site-wide.
