Nano-targetted Facebook Ads
Today, we are joined by Ángel Cuevas Rumín, an Associate Professor in the Telematic Engineering Department at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. Ángel research interest focuses on ensuring transparency on the internet through machine learning techniques. He joins us to discuss one of his recent work on nano-targetting individuals online with non-PII data.
Ángel began why his research field is critical, citing how the big players such as Facebook have a huge impact on our society today. He discussed how he got the data for his work using Facebook API. He also discussed the limitation of this approach and how he intuitively develop his additional software that scraps the data he needs.
Speaking of Facebook ads, Ángel discussed what it takes to run a Facebook campaign. He then discussed how Facebook profile users are based on activities on the platform. He also gave reasons why companies need to profile users but yet, should not go too granular with their ad targeting, a concept called nano-targeting. He gave examples of how nano-targeting can be used to determine the actual preferences of a user.
He spoke about the limits that big social media companies such as Facebook and LinkedIn have in place. Unfortunately, they do not enforce them. Ángel also explained how news outlets and politicians use nano-targeting to reach their audience during elections.
Moving on, the Professor suggested ideas Facebook can implement to clamp down on users manipulating ad campaigns for nano-targeting. Ángel also spoke on the actions of other big companies such as Google in this regard. He reiterated his concerns about how fragile our privacy is online. Speaking of solutions, he made suggestions on how we can enlighten the masses more on the usage and commercialization of their data. He also mentioned the need to break the monopolies in the social media space. You can follow Ángel on Twitter @acrumin or on LinkedIn here.
Angel Cuevas
Dr. Ángel Cuevas is currently an Associate Professor in the Telematic Engineering Department at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. His research interests are focused on Internet Measurements, Web Transparency, Privacy and P2P Networks. He is co-author of more than 70 papers in prestigious international journals and conferences such as CACM, PNAS, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks, IEEE Network, IEEE Communications Magazine, WWW, ACM CONEXT, ACM CHI and USENIX Security. He is recipient of the Best Paper Award in ACM MSWiM 2010 and the 2018 Emilio Aced Research Prize granted by the Spanish Data Protection Agency. Dr. Cuevas research has been highligted in more than 200 news outlets including Financial Times, The Sunday Times, Le Figaro, Newscientists, TVE, La Sexta, Antena 3, Cadena Ser, Cadena Cope, RNE, El País, El Mundo, El Diario, etc.
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