Facebook really does know that much about you

I wanted to talk about something specific I learned today about social media advertising. The other co-founder of Datify, Ben published a post on blog today titled “Targeting Based on Real Behaviour”. This post essentially explains the new Facebook audience categories that have rolled out in the UK recently and how they allow more targeting options than ever before.

Now, my expertise rests in organic visibility and technical SEO and not in paid advertising. Working in a multi-disciplined agency provides the added benefit of learning from people who are experts in their own areas. Ben’s post in particular is the perfect example of this and I want to emphasise how huge the points made within it really are.

To summarise his post, Facebook have been testing and running a series of additional audience categories in the US for a while. This has now been rolled out in the UK in which all business and marketing agencies now have full access to them. These are the additional targeting options available:

• Target a person by likely vehicle age
• Target by vehicle classification
• Target by likely new vehicle age
• By number of cars in the household
• Whether a person is likely to give to charity
• Whether a person is likely to change banks
• Whether a person has loans
• Whether a person has home or loan insurance
• When an insurance renews by month
• Whether a person is likely to switch insurance partners
• Whether a person is likely to invest
• What type of investments they are likely to purchase
• Whether a person spends on debit or credit card
• How many credit cards a person has
• A persons purchasing behaviour
• A person’s level of spend
• A person’s residential status
• What property a person lives in

I don’t know about anybody else, but when I read through this list and how specific you can target for some events, I was fairly impressed. However, it got me thinking about how Facebook are obtaining this information and spurred a conversation in the office.

With me and my naïve organic mind set, I always thought Facebook primarily use their own data to allow businesses to target consumers. However, looking at the updated audience categories I struggled to see how Facebook could use their own data to provide these options. How could a person’s likes, posts and general engagement on Facebook show whether their insurance is due next month? Unless you are someone who literally posts their life on Facebook (I am fully aware there are a few of these), the data simply isn’t going to be accurate enough to do this. Summarising from the conversation we had in the office today, the reality is, Facebook aren't using their own data, they are buying it in.

Facebook is becoming a huge data house to know everything about you

If you look around on the web you will find a few sources that show Facebook are buying in offline data from several companies such as Datalogix, Acxiom and BlueKai. This is to get as much information as they can about their users. Combine this data with the sets they already have and you have an extremely, if not the most powerful way of targeting people.

For a person who has come from a search background, this is serious news. Google has been the main driver for years when it comes to major insurance companies using PPC to gain new customers. The same goes for mortgages, loans, car purchases etc. These categories have been big money for Google and for companies within these industries, Google has pretty much been the only option when it comes to PPC. Now Facebook has rolled out these new audience categories, this is a game changer and puts them right in the tracks to take some of that revenue from Google.

This opens up a new platform for brands to look into and this alone has its advantages. This means in the early days it will be less competitive and cheaper, but it also looks like the more effective way to target people rather than keyword searches.

If anyone from the UK is working in or running a business in any of the industries mentioned above, I would seriously consider looking at this as soon as you can. Take advantage of the new options available to get the best CPC you can before the masses jump on board.

Are they going too far?

Whilst this is an incredible opportunity for certain businesses to take advantage of, I do wonder if this will alter what people put on Facebook (this probably warrants its own post). I have debated before if a person knows they are being tracked. Even on a subconscious level, do they change their behaviour to reflect what they want the data to show? We already know that people will post in a specific way to project a specific image of themselves online. Is there a chance we could all be doing this with any online engagement? When you think about it, how many of us are 100% true when filling out a survey for example. We tend to always lean toward the answers that either make us look a bit better or make us feel better. Very few people are brutally honest in these.

The new audience categories are very clean cut and aren’t necessarily data that people can skew. If Facebook make it overly obvious that users are being tracked to this detail, it could make them much more aware of what content they share with Facebook skewing their own data.

Personally, I am very conscious of what Facebook is doing and I am often thinking about what I place on there and how it affects what they categorise me as. I am in the digital marketing world and see this kind of info every day, so I’m not your average user. I am unsure if many others do this, but I feel more research is needed on how much a user’s behaviour and engagement changes once they know they are being tracked.