Early 2018 has been a tumultuous one for social media giant Facebook, wrapped up in political scandal, data vulnerability issues, and global regulations all while their users question the trustworthiness of the platform.

In an interview with Vox, CEO Mark Zuckerberg recognizes the gravity of the current challenges Facebook is up against. “I think we will dig through this hole, but it will take a few years.”

Implications are especially pertinent for digital advertisers. Below are the two largest changes already being implemented along with Thruline’s point-of-view on the impact to our higher education partners.

Removing Third-Party Targeting Data
In response to the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Facebook is phasing out all of its third-party targeting data partners, most notably Acxiom, Oracle Data Cloud, Epsilon, and Experian. This is mostly inclusive of purchasing and in-market behavioral targeting available to Facebook and Instagram advertisers through these third-party data brokers. While the removal of these partners is set to complete by May 25 in the EU to comply with GDPR, non-EU advertisers will have until October 1 before all ads will stop delivering to these audiences.

The removal of third-party audiences will have varied impact across different industries. As education advertisers, Thruline Marketing mostly focuses on high-targeted Facebook and Instagram campaigns with a goal of maximizing efficient inquiry and enrollment volume for our partners. With these goals in mind, broader behavioral targeting is rarely used with interest based, demographic, and first-party data typically driving better performance.

New Certification Tool for Custom Audiences
Launched in 2012, Custom Audiences allow advertisers to upload lists of emails and phone numbers to target specific Facebook users. Data privacy issues have been widely exposed with the recent Cambridge Analytica scandal.

In response, Facebook is building a certification tool for Custom Audiences that will require advertisers to guarantee that user personal information is obtained legitimately with user consent. Facebook spokesperson Elisabeth Diana told TechCrunch that “[Facebook has] always had terms in place to ensure that advertisers have consent for data they use but we’re going to make that much more prominent and educate advertisers on the way they can use the data.”

Along with the new certification tool, Facebook will prevent advertisers from being able to share Custom Audience data across Facebook Business accounts to prevent other advertisers to target users whose information was not gathered with their expressed consent.

Thruline Marketing always ensures usage of personally identifiable information is legitimate and compliant. Rightfully obtained first-party data of our partners provides the best results for re-targeting or lookalike modeling, therefore Thruline typically recommends against utilizing any purchased lists for Facebook targeting.

Where We Go From Here?
While we don’t foresee immediate changes to our existing campaigns, Facebook’s reaction to ongoing data security battles will not likely be isolated to the removal of third-party targeting and a certification tool. The team at Thruline will continue to monitor the paid social landscape as more is sure to develop.

Facebook and Instagram will remain important in our paid digital mix, however, continued changes to ad buying may result in more marketing dollars shifting over to other social publishers like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest or other channels like display and video. It will be especially interesting to see whether other social networks increase investment in their ad buying platforms as Facebook continues to face challenges.

Myron Liu, Digital Media Manager