June 15, 2018—Facebook is adding new accountability and transparency requirements for businesses that use its custom audiences tool to target its customer base.
Starting July 2, advertisers will have to declare whether contact info uploaded for ad targeting was collected with proper user consent by them, one of their partners or both, TechCruch reports.
Companies can only share Custom Audiences info with partners like ad agencies if they’re formally connected through Facebook’s business manager tool. And Facebook will start to show advertisers reminders that they need consent for contact info ad targeting and force all users connected to an ad account to confirm these terms.
Since 2012, Facebook has offered Custom Audiences as a way for businesses to upload privacy-safe hashed lists of customer contact info. Facebook matches that against its users’ info to show them the business’ ads, rather than companies having to pay to try to reach those people through demographic targeting.
