Facebook’s Ads Archive that was launched in May 2018 had to receive criticisms as it only included ads related to politics or policy issues. However, the library has undergone necessary changes and will now include active ads about anything, as well as inactive political and issue ads. It displays Page creation dates, mergers with other Pages, Page name changes and where a Page is managed from, and the option to report an ad for policy violations all of which will be visible on a new Page Transparency tab on all Pages.
Users can search political and issue ads by keyword or other ads by Page name, and Facebook will lend a hand with auto-fill suggestions and previous searches. The Library also displays Pages’ total political ads in the past week or since May 2018. In mid-May, Facebook will move to offering daily downloadable Ad Library reports as well as monthly and quarterly ones instead of just weekly ones as it currently does.
The improved transparency could allow researchers, government investigators, journalists or anyone play watchdog to ensure that the ads aren’t being misused to spread misinformation or suppress voting.
Facebook is also bringing its political ad labeling to the whole European Union after launching in the UK in October. Political and issue ad buyers will have to submit documents and pass technical checks to verify their location and identity that will be reviewed by automated systems and audited by users who can report ads without proper labels. Facebook will also add a “Paid for by” label to all political and issue ads on Facebook and Instagram and place active and inactive ones in the Ad Library.
The labels will review who bought the ad, their contact details, the budget for that ad, how many people saw it and the age, location and gender demographic details. Facebook is also extending researchers’ and developers’ programmatic access to Ad Library API, which was previously in closed beta.
Now anyone with a Facebook developer account who goes through the Identity Confirmation process and agrees to the platform terms of service can use software to sift through and spot trends in the data. The Ad Library and reports can also be accessed even if you don’t have a Facebook account.
