By: Protocol
May 20, 2021
Facebook’s ad library allows researchers to see the content of ads that run on the platform and information on who those ads reach. But there is one key insight Facebook doesn’t offer: information on how those ads were targeted.
A new bill being introduced Thursday by two House Democrats could change that. The Social Media DATA Act, introduced by Reps. Lori Trahan and Kathy Castor, would force large platforms like Facebook and Google to give researchers and the Federal Trade Commission access to more detailed ad libraries. Those libraries would include, among other things, a description of the audience that was targeted, information about how many people interacted with the ad and details about whether the ad was optimized for awareness, traffic or some other purpose.
“The Social Media DATA Act will help shine a long overdue light on all of the impacts ad targeting has on consumers — not just the rosy picture painted by companies focused on their bottom line,” Trahan said in a statement.
Researchers say ad targeting data is crucial to understanding advertisers’ intent. A housing ad, for example, may seem innocuous— until you realize its target audience excludes Black viewers, or users in a ZIP code where most residents are Black. But right now, even on Facebook — which has the most robust ad archive of any platform — the only way to see a given ad’s targeting data is if you’ve been served the ads yourself. Facebook argues the policy protects users from bad actors who might try to reverse-engineer those users’ interests by collecting targeting data en masse. But the policy also means the growing number of researchers interested in studying digital advertising have to build workarounds — often without Facebook’s consent