Facebook recently announced plans to end relationships with third-party targeting overlays from services such as
Acxiom, Oracle, Experian and others as part of the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica issue that was uncovered a few weeks ago. What this means for marketers is that, at least on Facebook, advertising is going to get a while lot harder.
For too long, third-party targeting data has been a crutch for marketers and not forced them to develop compelling creative that would resonate with their target audiences. For example: if you're selling baby diapers, it was easy to create an ad and just target those that spent money on baby food in the past 30 days, because marketers had access to credit card spend data. So if you used your credit or debit card on baby food at your local grocery store, this gets registered and your diaper ad gets shown to those people. Ever notice how you get shown ads for adjacent products? This has been a common practice for quite some time, but your average consumer just learned about it because of Cambridge Analytica.
I expect more ad networks to follow suit as this begins to fester. This means that marketers are going to have to go back to leaning on creative messaging and compelling design to resonate with their target audiences.
Image credit Credit: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg