Facebook Partner Categories removal and effects on your Media Plan

Facebook announced in late March 2018 that it is getting rid of the Partner categories, this was in response to the Cambridge Analytical Scandal. 


Message from Facebook

“We want to let advertisers know that we will be shutting down Partner Categories. This product enables third party data providers to offer their targeting directly on Facebook,” reads the terse three-sentence post published unattributed to the company’s Newsroom blog. “While this is common industry practice, we believe this step, winding down over the next six months, will help improve people’s privacy on Facebook.”

So this post is about the removal of the partner categories removal and how it will affect your overall media plan.

Basics first

Below is the screengrab of the data you cna get from the partner categories- just an example. 

But what it is exatly?


You perform a certain action away from Facebook. These data mining companies collect this information. They then pass it on to Facebook. Facebook matches it up to your profile. Advertisers can then target you based on that activity.

This can be found under the 'Detailed Targeting'

Examples of Partner Categories targeting include the following:

• Automotive shoppers
• Company size
• Charitable donations
• Credit union member
• Corporate executives
• Retail purchase behavior
• Likely to move
• Business travelers

What is Partner categories (rather what were?)


Partner Categories are based on information provided by Facebook Marketing Partners with the Audience Data Provider specialty. These categories allow you to further refine your targeting based on information compiled by these partners, such as offline demographic and behavioral information like homeownership or purchase history. For businesses that don't have access to customer data of their own to create Custom Audiences, Partner Categories may be a good option.

Availability -Market wise


Partner Categories were available to people targeting audiences located in the United States, Brazil, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan. 


Data Partners

• Acxiom, which can provide data from Australia, France, Germany, the UK and the US
• Acxiom Japan, which can provide data from Japan.
• CCC Marketing, which can provide data from Japan.
• Epsilon, which can provide data from the US
• Experian, which can provide data from Australia, Brazil, the UK and the US
• Oracle Data Cloud (formerly Datalogix), which can provide data from the UK and the US
• Quantium, which can provide data from Australia

How Facebook used to charge you for using these services?

Facebook manages the costs associated with Partner Categories for you automatically to ensure you're not charged more than your bid. When you're using Partner Categories, our system reduces your bid in the auction by no more than 15% to cover data costs.

Examples on usage of Partner Categories

For instance, a company like Pepsi is able to advertise on Facebook using information gleaned from Facebook profiles, information it owns like email addresses, and information it purchases from data aggregators like Experian, which gathers together purchasing history and other valuable information. As part of Partner Categories, Facebook shares revenue with companies like Experian that help inform its data set every time a marketer purchases ad space on Facebook using that data.

Example has been taken from this Source 

Will this affect your media plan and Targeting?


Well, the answer to this can be YES and NO. Let me take a moment to explain this.

Actually, most of us advertisers do not rely very heavily or for that matter heavily on the Partner categories. Even if you ask some of the advertiser on how was his success rate with the partner categories, they will definitely say that they have not gained very much from it.However, certain categories are very much affected by it but still the % is very less. You will only be affected if you are in the 7 markets (see above). However, you can still sue it but definitely it will phase out soon.Note that this not only impacts advertisers accessing this targeting directly through Ads Manager, but also those advertisers who work directly with ad reps to get special Partner Categories access. 

But if your ad targeting is catering to the below categories and you are using Partner categories, you need to be careful and tweak your Digital Media strategy accordingly

Let's have a look at the data categories provided by Acxiom, Datalogix and Epsilon

Acxiom


Demographics:  you will be able to reach people by “Home” which includes if the person is an owner, renter, their length of residents and so on. You can also target by household size (1 to 6 people).

Financials:  allows you to reach bank card users, credit card users and investors or reach people based on their typical spending method (cash or credit).

Job Role:  target your Facebook ads by job role  including: admin, white collar, blue collar, education, legal professional, financial professional, military, sales, student and more.

Purchase History:  target users based on what they are spending money on such as: gas, computer electronics, office supplies, travel services, vehicles and more.

Datalogix


Auto - target people based on when they last made a vehicle purchase, what brand, body style and make was purchased and whether a person has a high affinity for leasing. You can even choose to target motorcycle owners.

Buying History-   


Demographics - Datalogix offers categories based on travel type (business, cruise, family vacations, international, casino, etc.), hobbies (cat owner, dog owner, RV owner, etc.) and lifestyle interests (auto enthusiast, fashionista, DIYer, gamer, gadget geek, healthy and fit, leisure travelers, spa mavens, etc.).

Retail Purchase History Similar to Acxiom, Datalogix offers Facebook advertisers the ability to target users based on their purchase history. They offer many categories including: children’s product buyers, corporate attire buyers, fitness buyers, men’s fashion buyers, pet supply buyers and more.  Almost any category you can think of you can target using Acxiom data.

Subscription Services Marketers can also choose to target subscription services users with Datalogix categories including: auto insurance, mortgage holders, online students and satellite tv owners.

Epsilon

Type of Business Using Epsilon categories you can target Facebook users who work for a corporation, home office or small office.

Occupation Similar to Acxiom, marketers who need to target users by job type can do so using Epsilon’s Occupation category.

Financials Using the Financials category, Facebook advertisers can target people who currently have an auto loan.

Lifestyle and Interests Under the Lifestyle and Interests Category advertisers can reach people who: donate to charity, are conservative, are liberal, give to veteran causes, are a magazine subscriber and more.


Purchase History Epsilon doesn’t provide comprehensive purchase history targeting like the other two Facebook partners; however they do offer targeting based on whether someone is an online buyer or a retail buyer and how much they spend on average.

This is not the end, even if Facebook has no ties with the 3rd party data vendors, this does not mean you cannot access or buy this data directly from the 3rd party providers as mentioned above. However, this will not come cheap!

Last but not the least- “managed Custom Audiences.” These are audience segments that are uploaded by data providers and shared with advertisers and agencies. According to a note sent to agencies by Facebook, it will now require those uploading managed audiences to confirm the audience was built using only first-party data provided by the brand, not by the data provider.

Thanks for reading

Sarang