FB USES ALL THE DATA YOU PROVIDE

COMBINES IT WITH DATA FROM YOUR ACTIVITY

IT ADDS EXTERNAL DATA

FOR THE ADVERTISER IT HAS 50,000 UNIQUE CATEGORIES BASED ON

Demographics

Interests

Behaviour

Facebook offers its treasure trove of users’ data to advertisers who can slice, dice, cube and square the data to find their audiences. From this cauldron of information of its members, the Mark Zuckerberg-led giant made $40billion from advertisers — second only to Google’s ad revenue. A look at how Facebook and its advertisers use the data…FB has enormous data on your movements: It knows not only who you are but also where you go if you have location on. It can tell...FB not only knows what you buy online but also works with data brokers who collect data on people’s purchases offline by matching credit card use.Age, gender, location, relationship status, occupation, employer, where and what you studied, what you earn, size of your home, if you own it and who you live with (even if you are not connected on FB).In music, celebrities, publications, sports, tracks your friends under the assumption that your activity might be similar to those in your social circles.Uses outside data from loyalty cards, govt data and marketing companies to track user behaviour.Facebook has a tool called pixel for advertisers. It is code advertisers can place on their websites to track what people do after clicking an ad. Advertisers collect data on the effectiveness of their ads .FB was heavily criticised in 2016 for its ethnic affi nity categorisation, which it used to create advertising groups for ethnicities based on users’ Facebook activity. The categorisation, often inaccurate, but had the potential to allow advertisers to post discriminatory ads, such as targeted housing or employment ads that excluded minorities.FB also offers a retargeting tool. If you’ve placed a product in your cart. but not bought it yet, advertisers could target you with an FB ad to push youinto a purchase.Source: AP, ProPublica, NYT