Facebook plans to share more user data with advertisers

by Hadassah Nymark, campaignlive.co.uk, 30 October 2009, 3:35pm

LONDON - Facebook has amended its privacy policy to give its advertisers more information about how their ads perform.

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Facebook...changes to privacy policy

The changes come as Facebook aims to make the social networking site more user-friendly and broaden the types of user data it sells to advertisers.

Its PR boss, Elliot Schrage, told The Register that information would enable advertisers to benefit from "conversion tracking", a system that helps measure the effectiveness of their ads and make them more relevant.

Facebook users who enable their profile to be seen by anyone will find their wall posts and news feeds appearing on search engines.

The site also plans to exploit users’ location, adding it to the content already obtained from a user’s profile and Facebook usage.

The privacy policy has also been rewritten in a bid to appease the Canadian privacy regulator, which had felt the previous policy was "confusing and incomplete".

Facebook has given its users a seven-day period to comment on the new policy before it is applied.

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All Comments

Neil Hopkins - 02 November 2009

Hmm. As a Facebook user, I don't remember seeing this revision... And I'm not particularly happy about it either.

What would be really nice is for ads to be removed from your view if you're not interested in them. They're not at the moment - or at least, not on my profile...