Facebook revealed the next steps in its efforts to make advertising on its platform more transparent, including a revamp of its Ad Library feature and making more information available on pages.
Ad Library will now display all active ads that a page is running, not just political ads. This information was previously available in pages’ Info and Ads sections.
More information about pages is also being added to Ad Library, including the date they were created, previous merges with other pages and name changes.
In cases where pages have large audiences or run political or issue ads in select countries, the primary country location of people who manage that page will also be disclosed.
Ad spend information for political and issue ads, for the past week and all-time, had previously been available via the Ad Library Report, but it will now be displayed on Ad Library.
Search in Ad Library was also tweaked, as users’ previous searches will be saved as long as they are logged into Facebook, and the ability to search by page was added to the ability to search by keywords.
Ads can now be reported directly from within Ad Library.
Finally, starting in May, Ad Library Report will be updated daily for political and issue ads, rather than weekly, and weekly, monthly and quarterly reports will be available for download by anyone.
On pages themselves, all of the information that was added to Ad Library will be available via a Page Transparency section under the Home tab. This saves people the step of having to click Info and Ads.
Those interested in accessing Facebook’s Ad Library API (application-programming interface) to research and analyze political and issue ads can complete the social network’s Identity Confirmation process, create a Facebook Developer account and agree to the terms of service. Facebook cautioned that this process may take a few weeks.
As Facebook noted last November, news publishers in the U.S. do not have to go through its ad authorization process or label their ads as related to politics or issues, but all of their active ads will still appear in Ad Library.
The social network said it will use membership lists from third-party organizations, its news page index and other criteria to determine which news publishers are exempt.
Facebook said in a blog post detailing the updates, “We’re committed to creating a new standard of transparency and authenticity for advertising. By the end of June, we’ll roll out transparency tools for political or issue ads around the world. Shining a brighter light on advertising and pages on Facebook holds us and advertisers more accountable, which is good for people and businesses.”
