Meta, the umbrella company of social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, announced that it will make a new move in advertising and young users. The US-based technology giant stated that it will impose restrictions on the ads shown by the companies.
The changes, which will take effect from February, include ads targeting younger users. Companies will no longer be able to leverage the data of young users as much as they used to to show these types of ads. According to Meta, the innovations will cover Instagram and Facebook users under the age of 18.
Advertisers will not be able to use gender and in-app activities to display ads
After the changes, advertisers will block their ads from showing young users based on their gender. In addition, it is stated that in-app activities such as posts that users interact with on Instagram and Facebook and accounts they follow cannot be used to display targeted ads.
With the new restrictions, personalized ads that young users will see on Instagram and Facebook will now be created based on age and location data only. Meta says location is essential for users to evaluate services and products in their area.
Meta also says that as of March, teens can choose to ‘see less’ of certain types of ads in both apps. In this way, users under the age of 18 will be able to choose appropriate ads on Instagram and Facebook. It would be fair to say that Meta has taken a good step, given that experts constantly emphasize that advertising on social media harms children. The company has been criticized many times before for how it manages young people’s accounts on their platform.
On the other hand, Meta recently received a large penalty for personalized ads. The Irish Data Protection Commission (DPC) fined the company, led by Mark Zuckerberg, with millions of dollars for forcibly displaying ads to users.
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