Revised March 23, 2018 • By David Newcorn, SVP/Digital & Data

Already under siege over questions surrounding Russia’s alleged use of Facebook to influence the 2016

presidential election, Facebook took an even greater hit to its reputation with recent revelations over

Cambridge Analytica’s illicit use of Facebook audience profiles.

All of it raises questions about Facebook’s regard for its users’ data and whether this has any relation to

advertising on Facebook. Bottom line, should B2B advertisers even be using Facebook?

Plain and simple, PMMI does not download or use any personal or demographic data inherent in

Facebook as part of our ad targeting criteria. In fact, we do not use any part of a Facebook user’s profile

in order to conduct campaigns.

Then how do we target ads? All of the data that PMMI uses for targeting on Facebook is data that PMMI

collects transparently from attendees as they register for trade shows or from readers as they subscribe

to magazines. All of the segmenting and targeting is done within PMMI’s own database, outside of

Facebook. Once an advertiser’s customized audience segment is created, we simply use Facebook to

match as many of the audience as we can, based upon common fields like e-mail, name, etc.

When you’re buying targeted advertising via the PMMI Audience Network, you’re not buying or acting

on Facebook users’ data or causing data to be shared with third parties in any way. And Facebook is not

re-using PMMI’s data in any way except to permit you to reach the audience you’re targeting. (Just for

targeting, nothing entailing their personal interests or activities, and just that individual, not the friends

in someone’s network).

At the end of the day, advertisers and publishers, including PMMI, are using Facebook because that’s

where audience is consuming content. We are helping you sell your products by targeting professionals

who are interested in buying them where they engage with content in significant numbers.

While there are other social networks, such as LinkedIn, that we currently offer as part of our Audience

Network suite of media products, we are finding that, on average, Facebook provides the highest match

rates with PMMI’s database. In addition, the engagement rates are the highest with Facebook

campaigns. We maintain close analysis of the analytics resulting from campaigns with all of our social

media partners and will continue to keep that information transparent and available to our advertisers.

Our job is to focus on keeping up with these changes so that you can focus on your job: marketing and

selling packaging products, without worry.