Facebook Will Soon Be Targeting Ads Using ‘Likes’ And ‘Shares’

In 2014, Facebook first revealed its plans to begin utilizing data about the websites and apps that users browse for ad targeting. Now, the company says it will soon start passing browsing data from websites and apps that use Facebook Like, Share or Send buttons into its ad systems.

“We are continuing to roll out online interest-based advertising and will now begin including information from pages that use Facebook’s Like button and similar social features, as we announced last year,” wrote Stephen Deadman, Facebook’s global deputy chief privacy officer, in a blog post announcement.

To have their browsing data captured for ad targeting, users don’t have to actively like, share or send something through a Facebook button. They simply need to visit a page that has these buttons enabled, which is a large majority of websites and apps. Up until now, interest-based targeting on Facebook has mostly been limited to what users did on the social media platform itself.

“We sometimes hear from people that the ads they see aren’t as useful or relevant to them as they could be,” wrote Deadman. “Last year, we introduced online interest-based advertising – ads based on people’s use of other websites and apps – that helps solve this problem.”

Now, car dealership marketers will be able to target ads using the browsing data on Facebook properties, as well as external websites and apps in the company’s mobile ad network, Facebook Audience Network (FAN).

Users have what the social media company referred to as, “a new way to control the ads you see on Facebook.” The new control comes in the form of an option on the ad settings page within Facebook itself that allows users to turn interest-based targeting on or off, as opposed to having to do so through Ad Choices. Although there are certainly privacy implications, it can be seen as surprising that Facebook didn’t make this move sooner. Advertisers are already able to retarget their site visitors on the platform. Additionally, FAN and LiveRail, the mobile video ad platform Facebook acquired last year, both harness demographic and other targeting data available in Facebook to target ads on third-party apps. Also, there’s Atlas, which uses the Facebook ID to track the performance of ads off of Facebook.

At this point, it’s not entirely clear how granular the targeting will be, with Facebook simply explaining that, “if you visit hotel and airline websites to research an upcoming trip, you might then see ads for travel deals on Facebook.”

The new targeting abilities are expected to start rolling out next month.