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when a user gives Facebook a phone number for two-factor authentication or in order to receive alerts about new log-ins to a user’s account, that phone number became targetable by an advertiser within a couple of weeks

I’ve been trying to get Facebook to disclose shadow contact information to users for almost a year now. But it has even refused to disclose these shadow details to users in Europe, where privacy law is stronger and explicitly requires companies to tell users what data it has on them.

To test the shadow information finding, the researchers tried a real-world test. They uploaded a list of hundreds of landline numbers from Northeastern University. These are numbers that people who work for Northeastern are unlikely to have added to their accounts, though it’s very likely that the numbers would be in the address books of people who know them and who might have uploaded them to Facebook in order to “find friends.” The researchers found that many of these numbers could be targeted with ads, and when they ran an ad campaign, the ad turned up in the Facebook news feed of Mislove, whose landline had been included in the file; I confirmed this with my own test targeting his landline number.

“I think that many users don’t fully understand how ad targeting works today: that advertisers can literally specify exactly which users should see their ads by uploading the users’ email addresses, phone numbers, names+dates of birth, etc,” said Mislove. “In describing this work to colleagues, many computer scientists were surprised by this, and were even more surprised to learn that not only Facebook, but also Google, Pinterest, and Twitter all offer related services. Thus, we think there is a significant need to educate users about how exactly targeted advertising on such platforms works today.”

There are certainly creepier practices happening in the advertising industry, but it’s troubling this is happening at Facebook because of its representations about letting you control your ad experience. It’s disturbing that Facebook is reducing the privacy of people who want their accounts to be more secure by using the information they provide for that purpose to data-mine them for ads.

When I asked the company last year about whether it used shadow contact information for ads, it gave me inaccurate information, and it hadn’t made the practice clear in its extensive messaging to users about ads

There are ways to work around the growing blackout of keyword data. Optify offers 5 tips:

1. Make the most out of the data you have

2. Use Webmaster Tools.

For SEO work, use proxies.

5. Use PPC data to estimate keyword performance.

P&G is fully endorsing the often controversial Media Rating Council viewability standards for digital media -- which defines display ad impressions as "viewable" if at least 50% of pixels are on-screen for at least one second and video as viewable if at least 50% of the player is on-screen for at least two seconds.

“Individual users are not going to wake up one day and find their timeline completely ranked by an algorithm.”

Noto suggested direct messaging might become more social.

While it is a relatively small player in the digital ad industry so far, Amazon.com Inc. AMZN +1.92% is among the companies emerging as a potential rival to the duopoly. The retail giant is projected to bring in $2.89 billion in U.S. digital advertising this year, a 64% increase over 2017.

Snap Inc., though still a small competitor, is forecast to grow its U.S. digital ad revenue by 82% to more than $1 billion in 2018 while increasing its share to 1%, according to eMarketer.

Twitter faces more obstacles. The social-media company’s digital ad revenue in the U.S. is expected to decrease 4.9% to $1.12 billion in 2018.