How advertising and Sponsored Stories work

Personalized ads

See how we use your information to serve relevant ads to you.

Ads + social context

Learn how we make ads more relevant and interesting by pairing them with social news.

Sponsored stories

Learn how sponsored stories work.

Facebook content

See how we give you a better experience by telling you about some of the features your friends use on Facebook.

Personalized ads

We do not share any of your information with advertisers (unless, of course, you give us permission). As described in this policy, we may share your information when we have removed from it anything that personally identifies you or combined it with other information so that it no longer personally identifies you.

We use the information we receive to deliver ads and to make them more relevant to you. This includes all of the things you share and do on Facebook, such as the Pages you like or key words from your stories, and the things we infer from your use of Facebook. Learn more.

When an advertiser creates an ad, they are given the opportunity to choose their audience by location, demographics, likes, keywords, and any other information we receive or can tell about you and other users. For example, an advertiser can choose to target 18 to 35 year-old women who live in the United States and like basketball. An advertiser could also choose to target certain topics or keywords, like "music" or even people who like a particular song or artist.

Try this tool yourself to see one of the ways advertisers target ads and what information they see.

If the advertiser chooses to run the ad (also known as placing the order), we serve the ad to people who meet the criteria the advertiser selected, but we do not tell the advertiser who any of those people are. So, for example, if a person views or otherwise interacts with the ad, the advertiser might infer that the person is an 18-to-35-year-old woman who lives in the U.S. and likes basketball. But we would not tell the advertiser who that person is.

After the ad runs, we provide advertisers with reports on how their ads performed. For example we give advertisers reports telling them how many users saw or clicked on their ads.

But these reports are anonymous. We do not tell advertisers who saw or clicked on their ads.

Advertisers sometimes place cookies on your computer in order to make their ads more effective. Learn more.

Sometimes we allow advertisers to target a category of user, like a "moviegoer" or a "sci-fi fan." We do this by bundling characteristics that we believe are related to the category. For example, if a person "likes" the "Star Trek" Page and mentions "Star Wars" when they check into a movie theater, we may conclude that this person is likely to be a sci-fi fan. Advertisers of sci-fi movies, for example, could ask us to target "sci-fi fans" and we would target that group, which may include you. Or if you "like" Pages that are car-related and mention a particular car brand in a post, we might put you in the "potential car buyer" category and let a car brand target to that group, which would include you.

Ads + social context

Facebook Ads are sometimes paired with social actions your friends have taken. For example, an ad for a sushi restaurant may be paired with a news story that one of your friends likes that restaurant's Facebook page.

This is the same type of news story that could show up in your News Feed, only we place it next to a paid advertisement to make that ad more relevant and interesting.

When you show up in one of these news stories, we will only pair it with ads shown to your friends. If you do not want to appear in stories paired with Facebook Ads, you can opt out using your Edit social ads setting.

Learn what happens when you click "Like" on an advertisement or an advertiser's Facebook Page.

We may serve ads, including those with social context (or serve just social context), on other sites. These work just like the ads we serve on Facebook - the advertisers do not receive any of your information. Only people that could see the Facebook action (like on your timeline) would see it paired in this way.

Your Show my social actions in Facebook Ads setting only controls ads with social context. It does not control Sponsored Stories, ads or information about Facebook's services and features, or other Facebook content.

Games, applications and websites can serve ads directly to you or help us serve ads to you or others if they have information like your User ID or email address.

Sponsored stories

Many of the things you do on Facebook (like "liking" a Page) are posted to your timeline and shared in News Feed. But there's a lot to read in News Feed. That's why we allow people to "sponsor" your stories to make sure your friends see them. For example, if you RSVP to an event hosted by a local restaurant, that restaurant may want to make sure your friends see it so they can come too.

If they do sponsor a story, that story will appear in the same place ads usually do or in your News Feed under the heading "Sponsored" or something similar. Only people that could originally see the story can see the sponsored story, and no personal information about you (or your friends) is shared with the sponsor.

Your Show my social actions in Facebook Ads setting only controls ads with social context. It does not control Sponsored Stories, ads or information about Facebook's services and features, or other Facebook content.

Facebook content

We like to tell you about some of the features and tools your friends and others use on Facebook, to help you have a better experience. For example, if your friend uses our friend finder tool to find more friends on Facebook, we may tell you about it to encourage you to use it as well. This of course means your friend may similarly see suggestions based on the things you do. But we will try to only show it to friends that could benefit from your experience.

Your Show my social actions in Facebook Ads setting only controls ads with social context. It does not control Sponsored Stories, ads or information about Facebook's services and features, or other Facebook content.