Confirming the news, the social media powerhouse Facebook said that next week it will release a new advertising tool and touts it as a way for businesses to re-engage with customers who have already used their services, according to a Facebook spokesperson.
“Facebook may soon allow ad targeting by email, user ID and phone number,” a spokesperson confirmed.
In a glitch first unmasked by Inside Facebook, the new targeting alternative temporarily appeared in Facebook’s Power Editor tool today prior to its official release. Facebook had been planning to roll this out next week, but the glitch caught the social network by surprise, and caused a scramble to explain how it works.
Facebook says its ‘hashing’ system will protect user privacy.
The social networking firm said that it has been experimenting with this new feature with a select group of advertisers and will be rolling it out starting next week. It essentially lets marketers target ads to their existing customers on Facebook.
Here is how it functions: Businesses will be able to upload to Facebook their existing lists of customer email addresses, phone numbers, and user IDs. Besides, the company guarantees that it will protect consumer information — email addresses, user IDs and phone numbers — through a process it calls “hashing,” which allows the user data to be matched without allowing Facebook user data to be intelligible to advertisers, or advertiser data intelligible to Facebook. “Any personally identifying information will be hashed before being uploaded to Facebook,” according to a disclosure on the tool.
For those who may have privacy concerns over this exchange of personal information, the social network said the process is secure. Facebook, of course, ensures that it can achieve this without violating user privacy, or spilling personal information.
In fact, any personally identifiable information uploaded to Facebook is hashed so the social network does not have access to it. Similarly, Facebook’s own data will be hashed, so neither marketer nor Facebook will know the identity of the people being targeted.
“Advertisers do not get any data from Facebook; Facebook does not get any data from advertisers,” a spokeswoman said in an email. “So the tool does not grant advertisers access to specific, personally identifiable phone numbers, emails, etc; it gives advertisers an anonymous ‘match’ cluster to target campaigns against.”
Besides, Facebook declined to say which advertisers and how many of them had participated in beta testing in recent weeks. Addresses will also be added to the targeting offering, according to a spokeswoman.
Of course, it is not the only company expanding its targeted advertising efforts. Another social media outfit Twitter launched a feature today that puts tweets in the streams of a broader audience than before.