Facebook investing in Privacy Research

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Okay, so Devin, this week we're going to talk about privacy as it relates to Facebook. All right. And as you probably know, we've been hearing a lot from Google and Apple talking about privacy goals, things that are changing. We've talked about some of that on this show, actually. But today we're going to talk about Facebook and—

And the lack thereof, right?

Pardon?

And the lack thereof, right?

The lack thereof, yeah. So, there's been a lot, as you know, there was a news release actually that Facebook said they were investing in new privacy protocols or something. What's your take on that?

Hearing the words Facebook and privacy put together sounds like an impossible dream. Yeah. So what I think what we know about it and really from what Facebook has really been touting with it is that they are trying to take a more privacy-centric approach. That may sound like language that most of the big tech companies these days are using. And so I think it's still, you know, of course, yet to be seen in terms of what that actually means or what they're going to do completely. But I think their approach is a little stale. Sounds a bit rich to me, you know, just trying to, uh, they're trying to jump on the privacy bandwagon that I think Apple has started. And, and now you see obviously Google has been doing it, um, you know, with this deprecation of third-party cookies that's coming later in 2023. I think Facebook's just trying to look good in the spotlight and ride this privacy bandwagon, frankly.

Okay. Um, you know, I've heard stories about— I haven't even checked it myself yet, but I've heard, um that they've gone in and actually changed the interface. So if you're a Facebook user and you want to adjust your privacy settings, you no longer find all that information or those, those tools in one place. You have to kind of bounce around from area to area to make those adjustments. So if that's true, that obviously would not be a benefit to users. The other thing that comes to mind is it was probably about 2 years ago that Facebook again came under a bunch of scrutiny about their privacy policies, or lack thereof. And they ended up deprecating the ability of advertisers to target prospects. So a lot of the metrics we used or the choices we could make as advertisers to really hone in on exactly the types of people, their characteristics that we wanted, those went away. And as a result, as I recollect, you know, the ability to target users went down. The cost per lead or cost per acquisition went up as a result, and Facebook was a less effective platform really for advertisers. Do you think that some of their new protocols or pushes in this area are going to affect advertisers even more?

It's still a little yet to be seen. I mean, certainly going back to the days when we did have a lot of this data, of course it was all tied in with this Cambridge Analytica scandal and just where they were effectively illegally capturing data. Facebook, I think, has really truly never recovered from that. And so they're making face here with this privacy, some of these privacy-centric changes. What the claim is that they're gonna be doing more on-device processing, which many of you follow Apple, that's the same exact language that they use. So it seems like the Apple-Facebook war is really heating up in that regard. But it's a little yet to be seen in terms of how these privacy changes at Facebook will really affect advertisers. The hope, I assume like all advertisers, the hope is that we'll get more targeting features to be able to target users by certainly more interest-based data. And what would also be great, of course, is other actual behavioral data, which is a lot of what we lost, right, as part of this. Privacy change with the Cambridge Analytica scandal back a few years ago. So I'm hopeful that, you know, certainly anything that they do will bring in more of this behavioral data moving forward. But, you know, right now it's still in development. They're really just putting it out as a big PR push. And I think, like I said before, they're just trying to catch the wave of privacy and privacy change.

Right, right. That makes sense. I mean, I— my, my take on it was that they weren't stopping collecting that kind of information. So they still had the data, they just simply were no longer sharing with advertisers. That was sort of the impression that I got. But it sounds like from what you're saying, as far as how advertisers will be affected by this, it remains to be seen, right?

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think unfortunately at this point I would consider there to be no action items other than keep your eyes out on it, because this is going to be a big change, and I— it could drastically change how we target people on Facebook with ads in the future, but as of right now, this is more of a warning shot from Facebook saying things are coming. But like I said, still yet to be seen on what that actually means.

All right, cool. Well, I guess that wraps it up. Thanks, Devin, and obviously we'll keep our listeners posted as we get more information. We'll get that out to you right away, so stay tuned. Thanks a lot.

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