Facebook Limiting Information Shared With Data Brokers

Facebook is curbing the information that it exchanges with companies that collect and sell consumer data for advertisers. The measures affect a group of so-called data brokers such as Acxiom Corp. and Oracle Data Cloud, formerly known as DataLogix, that gather shopping and other information on consumers that Facebook for years has incorporated into the ad-targeting system that is at the core of its business. Facebook said it is ending an ad-targeting option called Partner Categories that lets such data brokers target specific groups of Facebook users—people who buy a certain product, for example—on behalf of their ad clients. Facebook believes shutting that system down “will help improve people’s privacy on Facebook,” said Graham Mudd, product marketing director at Facebook. ​In addition, Facebook apparently is halting its practice of providing anonymized data from its platform to such information brokers that they use to measure the effectiveness of their ad campaigns. But the company is trying to find more secure ways to share data with these brokers to measure ad performance at a time when advertisers are clamoring for data that proves that Facebook ads work.