Facebook Knows All

You heard it over the last several years on the news and scandals like Cambridge Analytica brought Facebook’s advertising techniques to the forefront of society.

As someone who has spend tens of thousands of dollars on Facebook advertising I’ve been exposed over the years to all of the tools they have in their toolbox. To Facebook’s credit they have done some outreach trying to educate users on what data they have and how they obtain it. Case in point, an ad I saw earlier today. When you click on the 3 dots in the top right corner of the ad, you are given options including one that says “Why I am I seeing this?”. Let’s walk through what Facebook is saying and how they are targeting me.

The first paragraph is innocent enough. English speaking, check. They were able to pull that information from my profile which makes total sense and in my opinion, totally fair information to use to sell to advertisers.

The second paragraph gets a bit more interesting. Starting with the first line “there may be other reasons you’re seeing this ad”. Hmmm. Ok sure, they wanted to reach men over 18 and living in Canada. That sounds similar to targeting me from speaking English and Ok with me. The last line is where they lose me. What does “where you’ve connected to the internet” mean?

In the two examples, you see below, you will notice that they are both related to eye products. Funny, because I was just browsing some glasses site today like Warby Parker! How is it that 2 companies were able to target me so successfully hours after my recent web activity based on my only my profile?

The answer. A pixel. A tiny piece of code that companies have embedded on their site. This piece of code is often used by companies to better understand who their users are and if users are performing the actions they want them to like purchasing a product on their site after clicking on an ad. There are far more advanced things you can do with this pixel but this should help paint the picture. You can see what sites have this pixel by adding this Facebook Pixel Helper Extension.

This is where I think Facebook’s use of data goes too far. They are tracking my activity OFF of their site, selling it to advertisers who then, in turn, try to sell. All based on the activity I didn’t even perform on a Facebook property nor would I be aware that my web browsing was being tracked and commercialized. The advertisers don’t have the ability to say to Facebook let me advertising to everyone who was on WarbyParker.com and from Canada. But Facebook’s groups this recent web history of mine into their black box of behaviours and interests which then advertisers like Clearly.ca can pick from.

It’s certainly hypocritical of me to call out Facebook for this behaviour considering I’ve done it myself. However, I think users and advertisers need to better acknowledge that this spying of your browsing history is occurring and it may be more invasive than you think.