Facebook says there's an easy way to break up the advertising walled gardens — but it needs brands to speak up first

brad smallwood facebook

Facebook and Google are notorious for their "walled gardens" that limit the amount of data advertisers can access.
Facebook exec Brad Smallwood said that a solution to marketers' measurement concerns — Nielsen's Digital Ad Ratings product — already exists.
Advertisers need to tell Facebook what metrics they want from Facebook, though, he said.
But agencies say they've been clear about what metrics they want, including attribution and conversion data.
Meanwhile, Google has its own privacy-safe, cross-platform program that has signed up 9,000 advertisers, up from 4,000 in June.

Facebook and Google get beat up a lot by advertisers for not sharing data with them while controlling the bulk of digital ad budgets. Facebook says that not only is it willing to budge, but that a measurement solution that solves some of marketers' concerns is nearly ready to roll.

Advertisers often complain about social platforms' "walled gardens" that limit the amount of data that they're willing to share. Facebook and Google in particular wield powerful targeting and measurement data but keep it within their own walls for privacy and competitive reasons. That means an advertiser that wants to compare how many people saw, clicked on and bought something from a Facebook ad can't easily see how it compares to a similar Google campaign.

Facebook hinted last year that a data-sharing program was possible but only if other digital advertising companies joined in. But there hasn't been much movement since then, nor has it been clear how a joint-platform program would work. To coordinate the program, a neutral third party would have to process and anonymize streams of data, and it's been unclear what company would be up to such a task.

But according to Brad Smallwood, Facebook's vp of marketing science, the answer to some of those concerns — specifically when it comes to measuring comparable audience and reach stats — already exists.

"I don't think the answer is that we're going to have to build something from scratch in order to make this work," he told Business Insider.

All the major platforms are already on board with Nielsen

Nielsen is one of "several" companies that could potentially power the high-stakes project with its Digital Ad Ratings (or DAR) technology, Smallwood said.

Dozens of digital players including Facebook, Google, Twitter and Snap feed web and mobile data into Nielsen's DAR system. Nielsen then pieces together the data to create audience and demographic stats that show marketers how a campaign run on a specific platform compares to an aggregate digital audience.

Right now, platforms keep their own data close to their chests, but in theory the platforms could share some of their data with each other through DAR so marketers could get a better look at how reach and frequency data performs across Facebook and other digital platforms.

"It's privacy-safe, there's no data that ends up flowing around the system, [and] there's great encryption," Smallwood said.

Nielsen's product is widely used by platforms other than Facebook, and Smallwood suggested that it would be possible to get a data-sharing program up and running without a significant amount of work — as long as all the platforms agree.

A spokeswoman for Nielsen said that it's possible for the platforms to change how they work with each other under the guise of DAR.

Smallwood declined to say to what extent Facebook has talked with Google and others about getting a cross-platform measurement program off the ground, but he said the topic has come up in discussions with industry groups like the Interactive Advertising Bureau and that "everyone is interested in solving this problem."

While agencies welcome more data from Facebook, they're also skeptical that Facebook will follow through and give them access to stats that they have asked for, like attribution or conversion data.

"It's great that they're being more open but I think it's just a starting point," said an agency analytics exec who spoke on background. "I don't think they're there yet."

Facebook says the onus is on advertisers to ask for specific metrics

Smallwood said that to get the ball rolling, large industry players — think vocal CMOs like Procter & Gamble's Marc Pritchard, Unilever's Keith Weed, or an industry group like the Association of National Advertisers — need to speak up and make specific measurement asks.

"We need focus," Smallwood said. "When you get a whole bunch of [people] together and say, 'What do you want?' Everybody wants the kitchen sink. If the ask is too broad, then the timing draws on. The specific ask is the key."

Smallwood acknowledged that Nielsen won't address all of marketers' concerns. Marketers want to dump all data from digital campaigns into one database to compare how each platform performs, but privacy concerns make the scenario challenging.

"We need to know what to build, and we also need people to understand that the privacy piece of this is a real concern," he said. "We need a solution that ends up meeting the need while maintaining that privacy element."

Instead, Facebook is wrestling with creating a privacy-friendly "modeled" method that leans on third-party measurement companies.

Agencies, for their part, argue that they've been clear about the metrics they want.

"It's funny because I think the majority of the brands or us as an agency have already asked for that specificity," said the agency source. "I don't believe that they have got to the level of granularity of understanding the differences of verticals and different types of media."

He added: "I think they do a great job trying to sell the products but then it's like, 'Trust us, they're great products.' That's where companies are having the biggest issues, including ourselves."

Google has its own answer to cross-platform measurement

For Google's part, it has offered advertisers its own cross-platform program called Ads Data Hub since May 2017 that allows brands to match up their own data (like first-party CRM stats) with impression data from both Google and non-Google campaigns.

Here's how it works: Ads Data Hub lives within the software programs Google Cloud and BigQuery. Advertisers first upload their data and then Google shares campaign data from any of its services. Advertisers can also upload data from campaigns running on other campaigns to look at metrics like viewability, reach, frequency and attribution.

Google says that it is privacy-secure and compliant with the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation. The catch, of course, is that it's run by Google, meaning that advertisers can not take user-level data out of the platform and use it elsewhere.

Roughly 9,000 advertisers use Ads Data Hub, up from 4,000 at the end of June, said a Google spokeswoman.

"Google has done quite a lot of work in comparison [to Facebook] to be more transparent and even provide data at the event-level," said the agency source. "Even with GDPR and everything, we still have access to it — that audit perspective is way more available, I would say, from the Google side."

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