As announced by Facebook on Tuesday this week, the social media giant is going to roll out a new tool called ‘Clear history’ that will enable the Facebook users in disconnecting their off-Facebook activity from their profile. As revealed by Facebook, the new tool may affect ad targeting however will have no impact on any measurement or analytics tools.
“It’s important to understand that advertising and protecting people’s information are not at odds, ” said Facebook in a blog post, “We can do both.”
Actually the social media company had made announcement about the ‘Clear History’ tool during last year’s F8 Conference itself when its CEO Mark Zuckerberg said his team is working on a tool that would allow the platform users to clear their browsing history as well as see all the apps they had interacted with.
As unveiled by Facebook, they don’t actually delete the user’s browsing activity or the off-line actions but make them anonymous.
“If you clear your history or use the new setting, we’ll remove identifying information so a history of the websites and apps you’ve used won’t be associated with your account. We’ll still provide apps and websites with aggregated analytics.”
The new tool that will be released in the coming months is designed with a goal to deliver more transparency to the users by showing them the list of all the apps or websites they have visited that make use of Facebook business tools like the Facebook Pixel, SDK or API.
According to the social media company, once the tool is live, users will be able to clear their browsing activity disconnecting their off-Facebook activity from their profile and that the company will not be able to utilize the data for ad targeting any more.
“This means that targeting options powered by Facebook’s business tools, like the Facebook pixel, can’t be used to reach someone with ads. This includes Custom Audiences built from visitors to websites or apps,” writes Facebook.
Facebook is informing this beforehand to the advertisers to make them aware of the impacts of tool on their ad targeting and that they should keep this under consideration while planning their advertising strategies in the coming time.
Looking at the brighter side, the new tool will have no impact on the measurement and analytics tools. The reason being the social media company is not deleting the off-Facebook activity by users but only making them anonymous, it will not bring any changes to measurement & analytics report and that data will still be there for the purpose.
“We will still be able to provide accurate measurement to help businesses understand the impact of their Facebook investment, while honoring people’s choice to exercise control over their off-Facebook activity,” writes Facebook.