(Image: Adobe)

Net-zero criticisms targeted at country folk, conservative conference ticket sales sent to Trump Hotel fans, and population reduction ads delivered to rugby enthusiasts. Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, has expanded its transparency measures around political advertising which reveals never-before-seen details on how people are using its ad platform to micro-target people with messages.

Meta’s ad library is a publicly accessible web portal that provides information on what Facebook and Instagram posts are being promoted by users for money.

While any Facebook page or Instagram account’s advertisements can be looked up, the company provides additional information on ads that are declared as being about social, political or electoral topics.

Until recently, Meta’s ad library showed some information about how much money had been spent and some broad details on demographics that had been targeted like age, state and gender. In May, the company’s VP of business integrity Jeff King announced the ad library would be updated to include more information.

This update will include data on the total number of social issue, electoral and political ads a page ran using each type of targeting (such as location, demographics and interests) and the percentage of social issue, electoral and political ad spend used to target those options. We’ll also include whether a page used custom audiences and/or lookalike audiences. 

As the update starts to roll out to Australian users, Crikey was able to spot some early interesting findings, including:

  • Conservative think tank Institute of Public Affairs promoting its “Net Zero Fail” report to Australians in the regions by excluding those who reside in Australia’s capital cities
  • Conservative Political Action Conference Australia promoting its ad to users who have interests in national security, patriotism, Trump Hotel and to those in Sydney’s richest suburbs of Double Bay and Woollahra
  • BHP Energy promoting energies about clean hydrogen technologies and new gas projects to those who’ve listed their interest as the ASX
  • Car lobby Australian Automobile Association promoting its Facebook page to people who have listed their interests as management, politics, small business and even cyclists
  • Population reduction party Sustainable Population Australia advertising to people who’ve listed their interests as Witchery, Kmart, carsales.com.au and rugby.

Digital advertising platforms such as Meta’s have given advertisers unprecedented power to direct messages to small, specific audiences. Meta’s ad library is the best among all the tech giants for providing insight into how these tools are being used and, in some cases, misused.