The Competition and Markets Authority has accepted proposals to vary Meta’s commitments in the way it uses advertising customers’ data.
Under original commitments made last year by the social media giant, Meta pledged to limit how it uses data from competitors of Facebook Marketplace that advertised on its platforms by giving them the option to ‘opt out’ of their data being used to improve Marketplace.
The new, varied commitments give Meta an additional way to implement the data controls set up in the original commitments. It plans to adopt this new approach, meaning that all advertisers can retain the ability to place advertisements on Facebook Marketplace and be certain of their advertising data not being used to improve the service, without having to opt in or out.
Having consulted advertisers and Facebook Marketplace users on the proposals, the CMA has concluded that the revisions go above and beyond the original commitments and would not leave any advertisers worse off.
As a result, the CMA has accepted the proposed variation.
The commitments followed an investigation into competition concerns by the CMA, launched in June 2021, which cited the example of how data derived from users’ engagement with ads on Facebook could provide Meta with knowledge as to whether a user is interested in a particular product – such as trainers – which could then in turn feed into a decision to show listings for shoes to that same user when it opened the Marketplace tab.