Why it matters to you
If you don’t like the idea of Facebook allowing advertisers to show ads to your whole family, you can opt out of this household ad service.
Facebook ads are going to get a little creepy this holiday season. The social media giant just announced new tools for advertisers as they finalize strategies for the holiday season this December — one of them includes displaying relevant ads to your entire household.
Facebook’s consumer research report found mobile shoppers aren’t exclusively from one, young generation — in fact, parents made up more than “50 percent of mobile-first shoppers last year.” That’s why one of the company’s latest tools will allow retailers to display relevant ads to family members in the same household. This data is based on you and your family’s Facebook and Instagram usage.
“[We utilize] the explicit relationships that people declare in Facebook … but we also leverage a handful of other signals,” Graham Mudd, product marketing director at Facebook, said in a media briefing in New York City. “For example, we look at shared check-ins, we look at where you access the internet — and if that happens to be from the same location everyday, then that tells with a pretty high degree of confidence that you are in the same household.”
Household marketing works in three ways: If your family is planning a trip to Canada, a hotel company may start displaying ads to everyone in the family — trying to get its brand on everyone’s radar. The second way is by offering gift ideas for other people in the same household. If your son wants a Sonos speaker for Christmas, rather than advertising the speaker to him, retailers can show the ad on Facebook to the rest of his family. The third method deals with reducing wasted ad spend. If a product is typically bought once per household, and if a customer in a household has purchased it — like a Netflix subscription — the company will stop advertising it to the rest of the family.
Facebook said it hides sensitive purchases, so things like alcohol, engagement rings, and the like will not be displayed to everyone in the household. You can opt out of household marketing by going into your Facebook Settings > Ads > Ad Preferences and remove yourself from the “member of a family-based household” category.
The social network launched dynamic ads last year, which are basically a carousel of static product images retailers can use. Now retailers can add product videos, as well as “overlays,” which are banners over ads that can show price, discounts, and more in various styles, colors, and placements. These will be rolling out in the next few months.
The household marketing tools are available now in the U.S., and will expand to other regions next year. The social network unveiled ad breaks for on-demand and live videos earlier this year, and is also offering more ads in Instant Articles.