What drives ad decisions at 1 Hacker Way?
Facebook vice president of ad products Rob Goldman shed some light on the principles behind the company’s decisions regarding advertising on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram.
On the principle of “people first,” Goldman wrote that Facebook aims to make ads “as relevant and useful” to people as the other posts they see, adding that businesses are helped by this, as well, since people will most likely not respond to “irrelevant or annoying” ads. He said the social network’s auction system prioritizes ads that are most relevant to users over how much money the company will make.
Goldman also stressed that personal information including names, Facebook posts, email addresses and phone numbers are never sold to anyone, with the information only being used by the social network itself to serve “relevant and useful” ads.
He also reminded Facebook users that they can click on the upper-right-hand corner of ads to hide ads they don’t like or block specific advertisers, and clicking on “Why am I seeing this?” gives people information on why they were shown specific ads, as well as a way to access their Ad Preferences, where they can manage interests and information to ensure that they see more relevant ads.
Goldman repeated the social network’s announcement in October that it is building an ads transparency feature that will enable people to visit any page and see ads being run by that brand.
Goldman also touched on small and midsized businesses having access to the same advertising tools that were previously available only to larger companies.