Instagram, Facebook and Messenger’s new ad privacy controls explained

Here are the key takeaways:

What happened?

• Users’ personal information, passwords and security preferences, payments, permissions and advertising preferences for Facebook, Messenger and Instagram will now be housed in one centralized location. The change intends to make account management and ad experience easier to manage for all users. Now, for example, a user will be able to seamlessly make changes to ad topic preferences consistent across different Meta apps.

• Further, if a user operates more than one account on any given app, they’ll be able to add different accounts to the same consolidated Accounts Center if they wish.

• The changes are part of a broader effort to “make the settings experience on our apps more consistent, regardless of which app you use,” per d’Apice.

• The company is also “making improvements” to users’ ad settings controls, says d’Apice. For one, it aims to provide users with greater transparency into how their data is used and shared with other websites and applications through the newly rebranded ‘Activity information from ad partners.’

• The company is “making it easier for people to understand their options when it comes to seeing ads shown by Meta on other apps and websites,” d’Aspice says. The tech titan is exploring ways to make the ad experience more customizable and relevant to individual users, including by enabling them to choose to see fewer ads that don’t interest them.

• All changes will begin to take effect today and will roll out gradually in the coming months to all Facebook, Messenger and Instagram users.

Why does it matter?

• Meta has suffered major blows to its advertising business in recent months, largely due to consumer privacy changes instituted by Apple across iOS devices that enable users to block the cross-app sharing and selling of their personal data. At the time that these changes were made in early 2021, Meta said it anticipated losing upwards of $10bn annually in ad revenue as a result.

• A year into these changes, Meta is still struggling to regain its previously irrefutable dominance in the ad space. It’s possible that changes to Meta properties’ advertising settings and controls could be part of a larger strategy to bounce back by incentivizing users to share more of their data consensually.

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