Newington's Digital Director Tom Flynn outlines the landscape for targeted advertising post-Cambridge Analytica. 

2018 has been a turbulent year for social media platforms. The Facebook / Cambridge Analytica scandal prompted many to take a closer look at what they had signed up to – and they didn’t like what they saw. As they used to say about television in 1970’s America; if a service is free, then you are the product. And this particular product was in high demand.

Companies offering quizzes and games within Facebook were able to harvest data – not just of those who played, but the data of their Facebook friends too – including email addresses, locations, dates of birth and page likes. In some cases it even included the contents of private inbox messages. This data was then shared with Cambridge Analytica, the company responsible for ultra-targeted Facebook advertising on behalf of the Trump election campaign.

With public outrage growing, Facebook announced measures to combat these abuses of its data, and to provide transparency in the murky world of online advertising. Facebook users were prompted to review their privacy settings and make their own choices about how their data is shared and used to deliver targeted digital advertising to them.

Digital advertising has transformed how companies and organisations communicate with their target audiences. A billboard or a TV advert is seen by all, regardless of whether the viewer is interested or not. Social media platforms offered a new efficiency; why pay for adverts to be seen by everyone when you can show them solely to those most likely to be interested? Why advertise baby clothes to parents of teenagers when you can use Facebook to target people who have been identified – through the content they post, the comments they make online, and the websites they visit – as having young children?

But with this new efficiency came new ethical problems and new responsibilities. The opportunity to offer contradictory messages to different groups has proved too tempting to pass up for some – especially in the political world. It’s entirely possible – in fact quite likely – that this has skewed election results around the globe.

But how to deal with this? Facebook has announced a new feature – a new section of each Facebook page offering the viewer access to all the advertising that is currently being run from that page. Twitter followed suit with its new Ad Transparency Centre, offering access to any ads run by a Twitter account in the past seven days. But this doesn’t affect the fundamental principle – companies will still be able to accurately target their advertising, ensuring great value for money. But there will no longer be cover for anyone wishing to hide what they’re doing.

For those who were playing by the rules – in business as much as in politics – this provides an opportunity. Many advertisers are overly concerned about their rivals being able to access their ads in this way. But in fact, these measures simply prompt advertisers to raise their game and learn from the fantastic, inventive campaigns of other organisations, and drive the industry to innovate more quickly.

Newington’s digital team prides itself in running innovative, high-quality, cost-effective social media advertising for our clients. A bit more transparency in how we do that doesn’t faze us at all.