Facebook will show all the ads a Page is running & archive US federal election ads

Twitter isn’t the only social network making its ads more transparent in the wake of the Russian election ads controversy.

Facebook will begin displaying all the ads that brands are currently running across the company’s properties on their Facebook Pages, the company announced on Friday.

Next month, Facebook will add a “View Ads” tab to Pages to show all currently running campaigns, including those running on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and Facebook’s Audience Network ad network of third-party sites and apps. The company will first test the program in Canada and plans to extend it to the US sometime next summer, as well as to all other countries worldwide.

“All Pages will be part of this effort, and we will require that all ads be associated with a Page as part of the ad creation process,” according to a Facebook blog post published on Friday announcing the change.

Once the test hits the US, Facebook expects to also show any past federal election-related ads that a Page ran. These ads will also be added to a searchable archive. Facebook will remove ads from the archive after four years. Each ad’s entry in the archive will disclose the total and average amount of money spent on the ad, the number of times it was served and demographic information about its target audience.

Facebook will also require election-related ads to feature a “Paid for by” label that is similar to election-related TV ads and will detail information about the advertiser when clicked. For advertisers that neglect to add the label, Facebook is developing a system that uses machine learning technology to be able to identify who is behind an ad and to automatically add the disclosure.

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About The Author

Tim Peterson

Tim Peterson, Third Door Media's Social Media Reporter, has been covering the digital marketing industry since 2011. He has reported for Advertising Age, Adweek and Direct Marketing News. A born-and-raised Angeleno who graduated from New York University, he currently lives in Los Angeles. He has broken stories on Snapchat's ad plans, Hulu founding CEO Jason Kilar's attempt to take on YouTube and the assemblage of Amazon's ad-tech stack; analyzed YouTube's programming strategy, Facebook's ad-tech ambitions and ad blocking's rise; and documented digital video's biggest annual event VidCon, BuzzFeed's branded video production process and Snapchat Discover's ad load six months after launch. He has also developed tools to monitor brands' early adoption of live-streaming apps, compare Yahoo's and Google's search designs and examine the NFL's YouTube and Facebook video strategies.