Facebook Ad Upload Data Feed File Format
The short reply is, "No." Uploading voter files to a Facebook custom audience a violation of their Advertising Policies, so don't do it or risk having your account banned.
Some may exist asking one or more of the following questions: What is a voter file? What is a custom audience? And why would I want to do this in the first identify?
Voter Files
According to Pew Inquiry, voter files are digital databases that are "built by commercial organizations using official, publicly available government records of who is registered to vote and who cast ballots in past elections. They not only give a nationwide motion picture of voter registration and election turnout, merely likewise usually include information from outside data sources (such as consumer data vendors, credit bureaus and political organizations) and are marketed as providing a rich and comprehensive record for about every American adult.
Yet, while information on the voter file record indicates whether or non someone voted in a given election, it does not indicate whom they voted for. That stays with yous in the voting booth."
Anyone can create their own voter file by obtaining a copy of the public voter checklist, which is a public record that tin be obtained by request the clerk in most any city, town, or state (for which they may charge a fee). In about states, it is perfectly legal for a political candidate to call, mail, or knock on the door of a registered voter. And voter checklists are frequently obtained by political parties and fabricated bachelor to their candidates.
Facebook Custom Audiences
When you run an ad campaign, Facebook allows advertisers to upload a listing of names, addresses, emails, and/or phone numbers. This is known as a "customer list." Facebook will and so attempt to friction match those records with its user database, creating what is chosen a "custom audience," which can then be targeted with advertisements. Note that the contents of these matched users are "hashed" (a computer term for scrambled and encrypted information), such that the data is simply usable past the advertising algorithm and isn't direct available to humans — including Facebook employees.
Advertising to Voters
Now, information technology'south probably articulate to yous why campaigns like uploading voter files to Facebook. They tin can provide a very specific audience for campaign advertisements. Indeed, it has been common practice for political candidates and consultants to exercise exactly this. Furthermore, there are many third-party solutions that will both provide the voter list data and run advertising campaigns to those lists on the candidate's behalf.
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Facebook's Advert Policies
While accessing, selling, and using this data is all perfectly legal, it'south been a gray surface area with regard to Facebook's Advertising Policies. The fallout from the Cambridge Analytica scandal has led to a number of significant changes to its advertising platform in April and May 2018. On April v, 2018, Facebook appear new policies for "Increased Transparency and Accountability for Balloter and Issue Ads." These new policies included requiring ad business relationship authorization, labeling such ads every bit "Political Advertising" and displaying "paid for by" information, and others.
More specifically, Facebook requires advertisers to accept Custom Audiences Terms of service, which include the post-obit:
You represent and warrant that the Hashed Data does not relate to data about whatever individual who has exercised an option that you have, directly or indirectly, committed to honoring or provided to opt out of having that data disclosed and used for targeted advertising. To the extent an individual exercises such an opt-out afterwards you lot have used data relating to that individual to create a custom audience, you will remove that data field of study from the custom audience.
That's a mouthful and it has left some things open to interpretation. I've surveyed dozens of advertisers and political consultants about their practices and interpretation. Perhaps not surprisingly, not-political advertising veterans were unanimous in their decision that public voter checklists (and likely voter files) violate these terms while political consultants tended to have a much more than liberal estimation.
Today, during a quarterly call with my Facebook advertisement account director, I stated the following: "It seems clear to me that uploading a public voter checklist to a Facebook custom audition is a clear violation of the ad policies because the user did not explicitly opt-in."
Without a moment's hesitation, her reply was, "Correct."
No hedging. No weather condition. No exceptions. She went on to say that much has changed over the by few months and emphasized that political ads are receiving far more than scrutiny than they were merely two months ago.
What Is the Risk?
Many of the candidates and consultants I spoke with just shrugged their shoulders and said something to the upshot that "It's only a violation if you get caught." That's true. In a previous career, I was pretty heavily involved in risk management and so I know that a rough formula for risk is likelihood multiplied past consequence.
So, what's the likelihood that Facebook will notice out? I can't answer that. All I tin say for certain is that information technology is much, much higher than it was a couple of months ago. My Facebook business relationship manager was quite definitive: She would definitely advise against it.
And what'southward the event? This is less unclear but nonetheless untested. What nosotros do know is that your advertising business relationship volition exist suspended and you will be unable to run whatsoever ads. Normally, advertisers can simply create a new account and they merely lose their historical data. But what'southward unclear now is whether or not you'll need to become through the authorization process once again. If that's the case, information technology could be another week or 2 before the ad business relationship is back upward and running. But that'southward the best-instance scenario. The worst example would be that your authorization is permanently revoked and your days of running political ads are over.
Every entrada volition need to assess this risk for themselves. If yous're hiring a third party to run ads for you, I would recommend that you ask them if they are utilizing voter files to create custom audiences. Personally, my days of uploading voter files to custom audiences are over.
Source: https://candidatebootcamp.com/blog/uploading-voter-files-to-facebook-is-it-acceptable/
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