By Stephen Deadman, Global Deputy Chief Privacy Officer
We
sometimes hear from people that the ads they see aren't as useful or
relevant to them as they could be. Last year, we introduced online
interest-based advertising – ads based on people's use of other websites
and apps – that helps solve this problem. For example, with online
interest-based ads, if you visit hotel and airline websites to research
an upcoming trip, you might then see ads for travel deals on Facebook.
We
let everyone know about this new type of advertising last year, and
we've been gradually introducing it around the world. We also offered
people tools to turn off these ads, including the Digital Advertising
Alliance AdChoices
program, which provides a mechanism that allows you to opt out across
more than 100 companies. Additional tools are provided in the
advertising controls on iOS and Android devices.
Today, we're introducing an additional way for people to turn off this kind of advertising from the ad settings page
right on Facebook. If you choose to use this tool, it will become the
master control for online interest-based advertising across all of your
devices and browsers where you use Facebook.
If
you’ve already made a choice about online interest-based ads using
existing tools, you don't need to do anything. We'll continue to honor
your choice across all of your devices and browsers where you use
Facebook. And we’ll of course continue to support the Digital
Advertising Alliance, as well as the iOS and Android tools going
forward.
We are
continuing to roll out online interest-based advertising and will now
begin including information from pages that use Facebook's Like button and similar social features, as we announced
last year. We hope that the ads people see will continue to become more
useful and relevant and that this new control will make it easier for
people to have the ads experience they want.
You can learn more about advertising on Facebook and the controls you have by visiting our Help Center.