Facebook Axes Age, Gender and Other Targeting for Some Sensitive Ads
March 19 2019 - 2:30PM
Dow Jones News
By Nat Ives
Facebook Inc. is removing age, gender and ZIP Code targeting for
housing, employment and credit-related ads as part of a settlement
with advocacy groups and other plaintiffs.
The new actions -- and just under $5 million in payments --
settle five discrimination lawsuits filed by the National Fair
Housing Alliance, the Communications Workers of America and others,
the company said.
"There is a long history of discrimination in the areas of
housing, employment, and credit, and this harmful behavior should
not happen through Facebook ads," Facebook Chief Operating Officer
Sheryl Sandberg said in a blog post that will be published on
Tuesday afternoon, according to a spokesman.
Facebook has faced pressure on targeting around such ads for
years, sparked by a 2016 report from investigative-news site
ProPublica, which said it had been able to buy ads targeted to
house hunters that excluded certain groups based on ethnicity.
While Facebook didn't allow targeting specifically by race, it lets
advertisers seek consumers by criteria it calls "ethnic
affinity."
Soon after that report, Facebook said it would no longer let
marketers target housing, employment and credit-related ads by
ethnic affinity.
The company will now add further restrictions on targeting such
ads to U.S. consumers. Geographic targets, for example, will have a
minimum 15-mile radius from any specific address or city center,
according to Facebook. And the "Lookalike Audience" tool, which
lets advertisers try to find Facebook users who resemble the
customers they already know, won't incorporate factors such as age,
religious views or Facebook Group membership when targeting these
ads.
Among other additional steps, Facebook will build a tool to let
people search all its housing ads in the U.S., and meet with
plaintiffs' attorneys every six months to discuss implementation of
the settlement and resolve disagreements.
It is also providing the National Fair Housing Alliance with ad
credits to publicize fair housing rights on the platform, according
to Diane Houk, counsel at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff & Abady LLP,
which represented the housing alliance.
Equality has to be the guiding principle of digital marketing
and recruiting, said Peter Romer-Friedman, council at Outten &
Golden LLP, which represented clients in three of the cases being
settled. "That's what the law requires and has required since the
1960s and 70s. It's past time that the advertising industry catches
up with the law. The internet is not a civil-rights-free
space."
Kieley Taylor, global head of social at WPP PLC's media-agency
conglomerate GroupM, said she would keep an eye on how the changes
affect the efficacy of Facebook's lookalike tool for clients in
sectors such as financial services.
Facebook said it is still working with the Department of Housing
and Urban Development to address its concerns over housing ads.
Write to Nat Ives at nat.ives@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 19, 2019 14:15 ET (18:15 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2019 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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