Michael Seto / BI
- Facebook's sales chief Carolyn Everson said she's spent the past week talking to thousands of advertisers about the Cambridge Analytica mess.
- Everson said that some advertisers are seeking assurances that they haven't unknowingly worked with Cambridge, and Facebook is still working to find out.
- Most big marketers' use of Facebook is likely unaffected, she said, and no brands have threatened to pull their ad budgets.?'"
Everson told Business Insider that some advertisers are asking for assurance that they have not directly or inadvertently worked with the company, which is accused of using data from 50 million Facebook users without permission.
Cambridge Analytica is associated with its work on the Trump campaign. But Ad Age reported that the company has more recently pitched its psychographic ad targeting services to other brands, including the US Army.
Everson said Facebook doesn't know who may or may not have worked with Cambridge. "We are trying to pull that together as we speak," she said.
For the most part, the average Facebook advertiser will be unaffected by the Cambridge fiasco. Day-to-day most advertisers have relied on Facebook data for their ad targeting, not data collected by third party apps. And for brands that may have once used data from these kinds of apps, they likely would have stopped around 2015 when Facebook changed the rules to restrict the kind of data collection at issue.
The exception would be if a marketer had previously built its own app that collected users' friends data like Cambridge did prior to Facebook's rule changes. That's something Facebook is trying to get a handle on as it audits all third party apps, Everson said.
"If they created an app and collected friend data and didn't destroy it, there would be a problem," she said.
Yet for the most part brands primarily use the demographic data provided by Facebook (people's self reported ages, sex, location, etc.) for ad targeting and none of that has changed.
In fact, advertisers told Business Insider that they don't plan to pull ad spending from Facebook in light of the controversy. Everson reiterated that "none of our largest partners have" threatened to cut spending.
But that doesn't mean they aren't concerned.
"Advertisers care deeply about people," Everson said. "If people are upset, advertisers are upset. What they care about most is, how you react. That is what they are watching. They don't expect you to be perfect."
The meshes with what one top ad buying executive told Business Insider. The challenge for Facebook, he said, is longer term.
If this story doesn't go away - and given Congress' interest in talking to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, it may take a while - what happens to the Facebook brand over time? Does it become associated with consumer data and privacy problems?
Everson sees this crisis as providing Facebook a chance to become a leader in data privacy protection. "It's on us," she said. " We have to work incredibly hard to rebuild trust where we've lost it. It's our job and it's our problem."
Facebook will make sure its 2 billion plus users know how it's handing this problem by explaining its actions on data "front and center in people's news feeds," Everson said. "We need to really ensure frequency of message, and not assume that all people are reading the news. This is going to be an ongoing effort for us."
"We really want to set a totally new standard for data and privacy," she said. "This is a defining moment for the company and the future of the entire industry."
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