Facebook is the largest social media in the world, and that title doesn't come without consequences.
While the company thrives on the web, sitting on a massive amount of resources and data, the company has experienced numerous PR nightmare following series of scandals and troubles, especially regarding and concerning users privacy.
Most notably, after it was accused for allowing Russians to buy ads to meddle with the U.S. presidential election, things didn't go smooth for the company.
Anticipating future election and political campaigns, Facebook in a Newsroom post said that it's rolling out an improved and expanded transparency measures.
This includes an 'Ad Library' with public data on ads run on any of its platforms, including Instagram.
The Ad Library was previously called the Ad Archive in the U.S., and includes all active ads running on a Facebook page - not just politics or issue ads.
With the announcement, Facebook makes this Ad Library the central place for its users to view and understand ads and their related information. Previously this was available only on a Page in the Info and Ads section.
In the Ad Library, each ad is detailed with information, such as: who saw the ad, how much money the buyer spent to run it, and the number of impressions it received.
The Ad Library can also include additional information about the Pages where the ads appeared, including:
- Page creation date, previous Page merges, and name changes.
- Primary country location of people who manage a Page, if it has a large audience, or runs ads related to politics or issues in select countries.
- Advertiser spend information for ads related to politics or issues where the Ad Library Report is available.
To make this Ad Library worth Facebook's effort, the company said that it can store information about ads for seven years after they ran.
And for convenience, users can also search for ads in the Ad Library. As Facebook describes it, ads can be searched by Page, not just keywords; and logged in users can save past searches.
The company is also looking forward to update the Ad Library Report on politics- and issues-related ads daily, rather than weekly or monthly. It also aims to offer weekly, monthly and quarterly reports that are downloadable for anyone.
Facebook also announced new rules for political ads in the European Union.
Advertisers in the region are required to be authorized in their respective country to run ads linked with the European Parliamentary election or other important issues within the EU, as well as provide a "Paid for by" disclaimer.
The advertisers in question should also submit documents to prove both their identity and location, with Facebook doing ‘technical checks’ to confirm this, to make sure that users know who is responsible for the ad.
The changes come amid Facebook's pressure by election observers and researchers to provide more data in its ad archive.
"Over the past two years, we’ve made real strides when it comes to finding and addressing threats to election integrity, including: expanding our teams focused on safety and security to more than 30,000 people globally, on-boarding new fact-checking partners, and standing up elections operations centers in Dublin and Singapore," said the company.
"We’ve also launched ads transparency tools in the US, the UK, Brazil and India, as well as Ukraine and Israel leading up to key elections."