Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: John than Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: And how the Tech? Are you? A listener whom I
Speaker 1: will refer to as are twe did in a request.
Speaker 1: The reason I'm not giving the listener's name is that
Speaker 1: the request has to do with a privacy breach issue,
Speaker 1: and just to make sure I don't make a uncomfortable
Speaker 1: situation even worse, I'm not going to say their name
Speaker 1: on here, but I will say thank you are for
Speaker 1: your request. Are wanted to know more about what is
Speaker 1: now called meta pixel. Formally we would call it Facebook
Speaker 1: pixel because some of ours personal data became compromised due
Speaker 1: to an issue with Novant Health which apply misconfigured a
Speaker 1: pixel tracker, which led to the unintentional sharing of personal
Speaker 1: patient information with Facebook, which included medical data. That medical
Speaker 1: data would include stuff like a type of of doctor's
Speaker 1: appointments someone was searching for, or which physician they selected
Speaker 1: to see that kind of thing. It didn't auto magically
Speaker 1: know everything about a patient's medical history. It was more
Speaker 1: about specific activities having to do with an online tool.
Speaker 1: So the pixel was meant to track the use of
Speaker 1: this tool that no Vent had already launched but was
Speaker 1: really promoting early on during the pandemic. The tool is
Speaker 1: called my Chart. It's kind of a patient portal tool,
Speaker 1: and Novent was trying to get more patients to be
Speaker 1: aware of it and to use it to do things
Speaker 1: like schedule virtual doctor visits because of course at the
Speaker 1: time most of us were stuck at home. So the
Speaker 1: tracking tool was really intended to give feedback to Novent
Speaker 1: about how it's marketing campaign on Facebook was performing and
Speaker 1: whether or not it was actually leading to more people
Speaker 1: making use of the tools. So the intentions were good,
Speaker 1: it's just it plaid out in a bad way. We'll
Speaker 1: talk more about that later in this episode. So today
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about the meta or Facebook pixel,
Speaker 1: what that is, where it came from, and some of
Speaker 1: the issues surrounding it. And while I'll mainly be talking
Speaker 1: about Facebook in this episode when we're talking about the
Speaker 1: platform used to display ads, pixel is something that also
Speaker 1: plays a part in other meta platforms like Instagram. But
Speaker 1: let's let's start off, let's talk about what a pixel
Speaker 1: with a little P is because obviously meta pixel that
Speaker 1: pixels and upper case P so lower case P what
Speaker 1: is that kind of pixel? Normally, when I talk about
Speaker 1: pixels in tech, i'm talking about the individual units in
Speaker 1: a digital display that make up the points of light
Speaker 1: that you see. When we talk about a displays resolution,
Speaker 1: we're really talking about the number of pixels that are
Speaker 1: on that display. You measure it by going horizontally so
Speaker 1: across and vertically up and down the screen. So if
Speaker 1: I were to talk about Apple's sixteen inch macbuck Pro
Speaker 1: Retina display, that specific device has a resolution that shows
Speaker 1: three thousand seventy two pixels across, So it's three thousand
Speaker 1: seventy two pixels wide and one thousand nine twenty pixels tall.
Speaker 1: You multiply those two numbers together and you get the
Speaker 1: total number of pixels that display is capable of showing
Speaker 1: at one time. For this particular device, that happens to
Speaker 1: be five million, eight hundred thousand, two hut picks piles uh.
Speaker 1: In a very general sense, the more pixels you have
Speaker 1: in a display, the higher resolution it is. Resolution is
Speaker 1: not the be all, end all of everything, but for
Speaker 1: a very long time, resolution was like the shorthand way
Speaker 1: of saying this display is better because the number is bigger.
Speaker 1: That's what your mainstream customers understand. Bigger number means better tech.
Speaker 1: It's not always true, but that is kind of like
Speaker 1: the easy shorthand. Anyway, when I'm talking about pixels, usually
Speaker 1: these are the sort of things I'm talking about, these
Speaker 1: little points of light. Either that or I'm talking about
Speaker 1: a very disappointing film that starred Adam Sandler and Peter Dinglige.
Speaker 1: But the less said about that pixels the better in
Speaker 1: my opinion, And in this case, neither of those definitions
Speaker 1: really apply. The meta pixel, when you really get down
Speaker 1: to it, isn't truly a pixel at all, or rather,
Speaker 1: it's not quote unquote just of pixel. It's really a
Speaker 1: package of code that web masters can incorporate into their
Speaker 1: own web pages, so it's more like a cookie than
Speaker 1: an actual pixel. Now, there is a pixel created in
Speaker 1: this process, at least initially there was, and it's a
Speaker 1: one by one pixel, So it's a single point on
Speaker 1: a website, one little point. And usually it's transparent, so
Speaker 1: you can't actually see it. You're seeing through the pixel
Speaker 1: to the background, or it's it's coded in position so
Speaker 1: that it blends right in with the background, so you
Speaker 1: don't notice a pixel. That makes sense, because otherwise you
Speaker 1: would have this tiny little point of light that was
Speaker 1: out of sync with all the other pixels around it,
Speaker 1: and that would look strange. You might even think that
Speaker 1: there was something wrong with your display. So there is
Speaker 1: a pixel involved technically, but the point of lay itself
Speaker 1: isn't really the important bit. It's the code underneath that matters,
Speaker 1: all right, So the tracking pixel is more like a cookie.
Speaker 1: But that raises the question what is a cookie? Right?
Speaker 1: If you don't know what a cookie is a web cookie,
Speaker 1: then that that's not a very satisfying explanation. So a
Speaker 1: web cookie is some data from a website that your
Speaker 1: web browser will actually store within the browser itself, and
Speaker 1: the website can then retrieve that data stored in the
Speaker 1: web browser later on. So let's say that you visit
Speaker 1: a website and you leave it, and then later on
Speaker 1: you go back to that website. The site could check
Speaker 1: to see if your browser already has a cookie from
Speaker 1: the site, and if it finds the cookie and the
Speaker 1: data there indicates what you had been doing the last
Speaker 1: time you were on the website, then the website can
Speaker 1: customize your experience so that you don't have to retrace
Speaker 1: your steps. I'll give a very quick, simple example. Let's
Speaker 1: say you go to an online store and you shop around,
Speaker 1: and in your shopping you actually add a few things
Speaker 1: to your online shopping cart, but you don't actually go
Speaker 1: to the checkout process in the store. Let's say that
Speaker 1: your session has been interrupted by something you had to
Speaker 1: shut down and go do something else, uh, that demanded
Speaker 1: your attention, and you come back later, you come back
Speaker 1: to your computer and you go back to this website. Well,
Speaker 1: the cookie in your web browser is what lets the
Speaker 1: website know that you still have stuff in your virtual
Speaker 1: shopping cart, so that you don't have to go through
Speaker 1: the whole thing again, lets you pick up where you
Speaker 1: left off. And that is a very simple example, but
Speaker 1: it's a very powerful one because it shows how this
Speaker 1: little tool makes using the web a seamless experience. In fact,
Speaker 1: cookies emerged not long after the web. Did you know
Speaker 1: the web? It only been around for literally a couple
Speaker 1: of years, and a guy named lou Montouli created the
Speaker 1: basic web cookie expressly for the purpose of making the
Speaker 1: web rousing experience as seamless as possible. Because you don't
Speaker 1: want to have a situation where you have to retrace
Speaker 1: all your steps every time you go to a website,
Speaker 1: whether that is logging into the site so that your
Speaker 1: customer profile is there, or you know, having to pick
Speaker 1: up where you left off in a search like that.
Speaker 1: That stuff gets frustrating if you have to redo everything.
Speaker 1: It would be kind of like if you were reading
Speaker 1: a book and you got to, you know, a page
Speaker 1: twenty three, and you had to put the book down,
Speaker 1: and when you pick the book back up again, instead
Speaker 1: of having to just go to page twenty three and
Speaker 1: pick up where you left off, you actually had to
Speaker 1: start skimming the book from page one until you got
Speaker 1: to where you had stopped and then read it more.
Speaker 1: That would be a very frustrating experience. No one would
Speaker 1: read books. Arguably very few people are reading books now.
Speaker 1: I'm sure a lot of my listeners are the exception
Speaker 1: to that, because y'all are awesome. But you get what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So you had different kinds of cookies. They
Speaker 1: were aren't all one size fits sold. There are some
Speaker 1: major major categories. For example, you had session cookies. These
Speaker 1: exist only as long as you are visiting the site
Speaker 1: in question, So This is just while you're on a site.
Speaker 1: You might be navigating page to page on a single website,
Speaker 1: and the cookies are tracking you and keeping your your
Speaker 1: session active so that as you navigate to these different pages,
Speaker 1: you're still having the seamless experience. But once you leave
Speaker 1: the site, the session expires, your browser deletes the cookie,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't you know. Next time you go to
Speaker 1: the website, you're on a fresh slate. Essentially. Then you
Speaker 1: have what are called persistent cookies or sometimes they're called
Speaker 1: tracking cookies. These cookies live perpetually within your web browser.
Speaker 1: They can't expire sometimes sometimes they don't have an expiration date,
Speaker 1: and really the only way to clear them is to
Speaker 1: go through your browser settings and to clear cookies, to
Speaker 1: delete cookies. Uh, some of you have probably done that,
Speaker 1: where you've gone through to do things like clear out
Speaker 1: your cash and delete browsing cookies. These are cookies that
Speaker 1: can store stuff like your overall browsing habits, and obviously
Speaker 1: that can become really helpful if you're hoping to learn
Speaker 1: more about the people who visit your site, like you
Speaker 1: can actually see what people have been clicking on on
Speaker 1: your site. By installing and programming in the right kind
Speaker 1: of cookies, and that can tell you a lot like
Speaker 1: that can be really valuable information. Not not necessarily just
Speaker 1: to exploit the data of you know, people their personal information.
Speaker 1: It could be useful just from a design perspective, right,
Speaker 1: Like you can look and see, oh, based on the
Speaker 1: information I'm getting from these cookies, people are gravitating towards
Speaker 1: these buttons that are on the site, but they're ignoring
Speaker 1: these others. So maybe I don't need to offer the
Speaker 1: buttons that everyone's ignoring, or maybe I need to reposition
Speaker 1: them or redesign them so that people actually use them.
Speaker 1: So there are legitimate uses for cookies that can help
Speaker 1: webmasters create better websites, which means people visiting those websites
Speaker 1: have a better experience. That's a I think an overall
Speaker 1: benign use of cookies. You can also use them to
Speaker 1: learn more about the people who visit your site. If
Speaker 1: you're offering you know, products or services, you can use
Speaker 1: that information to learn which ones are really popular, which
Speaker 1: ones are speaking to your audience, and it might tell
Speaker 1: you that you need to shift your business strategy in
Speaker 1: order to maximize that effectiveness. You might also be able
Speaker 1: to learn things about the people that don't directly relate
Speaker 1: to your website. Maybe through the design of a cookie,
Speaker 1: you learned that a lot of the people who are
Speaker 1: visiting your site have of shared love of, say, anime,
Speaker 1: which could indicate that maybe you should get some anime
Speaker 1: inspired merchandise in your store. And obviously, if you go
Speaker 1: down that pathway where you are looking at users behaviors
Speaker 1: that don't directly relate to your own business, this gets
Speaker 1: pretty darn creepy, pretty darn fast, and it can really
Speaker 1: become a privacy concern. But don't worry. When we talk
Speaker 1: about pixel that's gonna blow all of this out of
Speaker 1: the water. They go nuclear. So that's your your your
Speaker 1: typical tracking or persistent cookie. There are also things called
Speaker 1: super cookies. Sometimes they're called zombie cookies. Uh. These are
Speaker 1: different from web based cookies. For one thing, you can't
Speaker 1: delete them by clearing out your cash of cookies in
Speaker 1: your browser. They don't live there. Super cookies typically come
Speaker 1: from Internet service providers, and so these are little bits
Speaker 1: of code that end up tracking user activity. So your
Speaker 1: I s P knows which websites you visit and how
Speaker 1: long you're there and where you went from that point.
Speaker 1: They can actually track you across different browsers and different devices.
Speaker 1: So let's say you go into incognito or private mode,
Speaker 1: WELLS still tracking you there too, because you're still connecting
Speaker 1: to your Internet service provider. Those little data packets are
Speaker 1: still going to your I s P and telling your
Speaker 1: I SP what you're up to. So you're in anonymous
Speaker 1: or incognito mode or whatever it may be called, that's
Speaker 1: not good enough. Your I s P still knows where
Speaker 1: you're going. Now, you you can definitely get more protection
Speaker 1: if you restrict yourself to just using encrypted connections. So
Speaker 1: these are connections where the sites you visit are using
Speaker 1: you know, HTTPS. So if you see that little padlock
Speaker 1: icon and the padlock is closed, that indicates that you're good,
Speaker 1: that this is an encrypted transaction. So the I s
Speaker 1: P is getting less information about what you're doing. They
Speaker 1: can see where you're going, but they can't really see
Speaker 1: what you're doing. Or you could go a step further
Speaker 1: and rely on a VPN. Now, this, as far as
Speaker 1: I know, is not a VbN sponsored show. It may
Speaker 1: be that someday an ad for a VPN will play
Speaker 1: against the show, but as of the time of recording,
Speaker 1: I have no connection to any VPN. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: mentioned any specific ones, but VPNs are good tools to
Speaker 1: have and research them, y'all. If you're gonna use one,
Speaker 1: make sure that it's a reputable VPN that preferably doesn't
Speaker 1: hold on to customer information at least for any real
Speaker 1: length of time. But if you use the VPN, then
Speaker 1: that will end up kind of letting you bypass this
Speaker 1: I s P issue because all the I s P
Speaker 1: will see is that you visited the VPN, and then
Speaker 1: all other traffic will go through the VPN, so the
Speaker 1: I s P will be unable to see what you
Speaker 1: are going where you're visiting. The VPN, however, can see,
Speaker 1: which is why you want to really research your VPN
Speaker 1: providers to make sure that you know they're not just
Speaker 1: acting like an I s P and tracking everything you
Speaker 1: do through them. All Right, That kind of gives us
Speaker 1: a overview of what cookies are and their purpose on
Speaker 1: the web, and pretty early on folks got concerned about cookies,
Speaker 1: tracking them and gathering information. It's one of the big
Speaker 1: drivers for the privacy rules in the European Union, the
Speaker 1: most recent being the g d p R rules. It's
Speaker 1: why the EU requires websites to request permission to use cookies,
Speaker 1: and it's supposed to make them not just get consent,
Speaker 1: but explain why cookies are used and how they are
Speaker 1: used and how a person's personal information could be used.
Speaker 1: So that kind of sets the scene. We're gonna take
Speaker 1: a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk more
Speaker 1: about what we used to call Facebook Pixel and how
Speaker 1: that came to be. But first let's take this break. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're back. We just talked about cookies. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: the emergence and evolution of Facebook Pixel or Meta pixel. Now,
Speaker 1: that tool originally debuted back in so it's been around
Speaker 1: for nearly a decade. At this point, well before Pixel,
Speaker 1: Facebook had relied on other advertisising tools. So advertising has
Speaker 1: long been the way that Facebook has generated revenue. It's
Speaker 1: just that the strategy for how to do that through
Speaker 1: advertising has changed. So in the olden days before two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, we're talking about stuff like good old banner
Speaker 1: ads with a very select group of advertisers, and that
Speaker 1: was it. So essentially everyone going to Facebook was seeing
Speaker 1: the same you know, ads displayed when they would log
Speaker 1: into their profile and there would be a banner ad
Speaker 1: along the side or along the top of the page,
Speaker 1: and that was it. Now, in late two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: Facebook created an ad strategy that would let any business
Speaker 1: purchase ads on Facebook. So now it was no longer
Speaker 1: this select group of partners that Facebook would work with,
Speaker 1: but rather more businesses. Now. I would say that that
Speaker 1: decision wasn't just Facebook saying we're limiting ourselves too much.
Speaker 1: It was that Facebook was growing to a point where
Speaker 1: other businesses said, this is a valuable place to put ads.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like choosing to put up a billboard
Speaker 1: ad along a very busy highway that that's gonna get
Speaker 1: literally more traffic than if you had that same billboard
Speaker 1: ad put up against a rarely used back road. Right.
Speaker 1: Facebook was starting to become a highway, so there was
Speaker 1: a push to have advertisers, more advertisers put their ads
Speaker 1: up on Facebook, and in those early days, the main
Speaker 1: strategy was to put up an ad that would drive
Speaker 1: Facebook users to go to the associated Businesses Facebook page.
Speaker 1: So there were business pages that you could visit. They
Speaker 1: were very much like a Facebook profile, but it was
Speaker 1: a profile for a business, not for a person, and
Speaker 1: then you could subscribe to that business you know, you
Speaker 1: could quote unquote like it is what we would say
Speaker 1: these days, and that would mean that you were essentially
Speaker 1: granting permission to the business to publish posts that would
Speaker 1: appear on your Facebook feed as if the business were
Speaker 1: one of your friends. Right, This was like opening up
Speaker 1: a door to serve up ad content to potential customers.
Speaker 1: But while that was attractive to businesses, that was not
Speaker 1: nearly as powerful as what would come later. Facebook executives
Speaker 1: realized that they were sitting on a freaking gold mine.
Speaker 1: And I don't think this realization was like a sudden thing.
Speaker 1: I think this was something that gradually came to grasp.
Speaker 1: So they had this rapidly growing community of users who
Speaker 1: were on Facebook a lot, and Facebook was getting a
Speaker 1: ton of insight on what people liked and what they
Speaker 1: felt were important just by looking at what they were
Speaker 1: doing on the platform. Right, you just track the behavior
Speaker 1: on the platform and Facebook and you start to see
Speaker 1: what kind of things are ending. You know, what people like,
Speaker 1: what people are responding to. And so Facebook began pouring
Speaker 1: resources into making more sophisticated ad tools that could leverage
Speaker 1: this information, because you know, this data is valuable, but
Speaker 1: you have to do something with it in order to
Speaker 1: realize that value. Right, you don't magically just make money
Speaker 1: because the data is valuable, you have to put it
Speaker 1: to work some way. Facebook's approach was to reach out
Speaker 1: to advertising companies and say, hey, your clients want an
Speaker 1: effective ad campaign. That means you have to make sure
Speaker 1: that you have the right ads showing up in front
Speaker 1: of the right people, and we can help you do
Speaker 1: that by giving you access to tools that will help
Speaker 1: you target ads to the people who are most likely
Speaker 1: to act on those ads. What's more, we're making a
Speaker 1: tool that can live on your clients sites, so the
Speaker 1: end business and keep track of when people act on
Speaker 1: an ad, including when someone actually makes a purchase based
Speaker 1: off an ad, so your clients will know that the
Speaker 1: ads are valuable and thus your service is a valuable service,
Speaker 1: and they'll stay your client. That was a very powerful
Speaker 1: sales pitch to the advertising agencies because you know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of a rising tides situation for three of the
Speaker 1: parties involved in this, Facebook ad agencies and the end
Speaker 1: businesses that want to advertise on Facebook, and mostly we're
Speaker 1: gonna just look at the businesses and Facebook and kind
Speaker 1: of remove ad agencies from the conversation because they kind
Speaker 1: of get in the way when we're talking about this,
Speaker 1: and ultimately, while they serve a very important purpose, uh
Speaker 1: for the for the purposes of our discussion, we can
Speaker 1: largely ignore them. So on one end, you have the
Speaker 1: businesses that we're buying up ads. These companies ultimately want
Speaker 1: more customers, right, and more sales. That's what they want.
Speaker 1: That's the whole purpose of marketing is to bring attention
Speaker 1: and then business to your business, right. So those are
Speaker 1: the most important elements to them, our customers and more,
Speaker 1: you know, purchases, so and ads effectiveness is critically important.
Speaker 1: And if you found out that the ad that you
Speaker 1: had purchased was not driving customers to your products or services,
Speaker 1: you'd cut that ad and you might not work with
Speaker 1: that ad agency again because it's like throwing money away.
Speaker 1: You want to make sure that the dollars you budget
Speaker 1: for marketing are returning value, that there is a positive
Speaker 1: return on investment. So for the advertising companies, those companies
Speaker 1: that service kind of a go between for businesses and
Speaker 1: the platforms where the ads will appear. Facebook's pitch was
Speaker 1: really attractive. The platform's tools would give real time feedback
Speaker 1: on how well an ad was performing, and which audiences
Speaker 1: were responding best to the ad, and even insight into
Speaker 1: the different groups and what they liked and disliked, which
Speaker 1: would then help advertisers when they were crafting ads in
Speaker 1: the first place, to make a more effective ad in
Speaker 1: the future. So this gave advertisers a chance to offer
Speaker 1: more valuable services to their clients, so again more benefit.
Speaker 1: As for Facebook, this was like striking oil because the
Speaker 1: company could demonstrate the effectiveness of this tool, the pixel,
Speaker 1: and begin to demand higher fees from advertisers because of
Speaker 1: the proof and how effective the strategy was. Facebook's revenues
Speaker 1: with skyrocket and considering that almost all of Facebook's revenue,
Speaker 1: like up to ninety seven point nine according to Statista, anyway,
Speaker 1: all of that was coming from advertising, like the tiniest
Speaker 1: percentage we're coming from other sources. So Facebook is a
Speaker 1: preferred nexus for ads, and advertising strategy is critical for
Speaker 1: company success. All right, So let's talk about what pixel
Speaker 1: is beyond some lines of JavaScript code and a one
Speaker 1: by one point on a website. By the way, JavaScript
Speaker 1: just benefits to mention this really quickly. JavaScript is a
Speaker 1: web focused programming language that's in plain text. It essentially
Speaker 1: determines web page behavior, so you can use JavaScript to
Speaker 1: to uh create specific behaviors on web pages based on
Speaker 1: user interactions. JavaScript is not related to the programming language
Speaker 1: that's called Java, which is admittedly a very confusing thing.
Speaker 1: Java and JavaScript are not related at all. Java is
Speaker 1: a programming language that has to be compiled. JavaScript isn't
Speaker 1: because it's a plain text programming or scripting language. Anyway,
Speaker 1: no need to go into all of that now. I
Speaker 1: just felt like it's always good to mention it because
Speaker 1: it's something I get hung up on occasionally. I keep
Speaker 1: I have, in the best made the blunder of referring
Speaker 1: to something that was written in JavaScript as being written
Speaker 1: in Java, and the two cannot be. You know, they're
Speaker 1: not the same thing. You should not confuse the two now. Originally,
Speaker 1: Facebook introduced a few different pixel tools and most of
Speaker 1: which have kind of merged into a single tool today.
Speaker 1: So there was the website custom Audience pixel and the
Speaker 1: Facebook Conversion pixel, and these tools were meant to provide
Speaker 1: a connection. So it was acting like a link between
Speaker 1: Facebook and the end business that was advertising on Facebook,
Speaker 1: and it was a two way communications link between the
Speaker 1: two parties. Here's how the idea would manifest. You would
Speaker 1: have a website they would enter into the pixel program.
Speaker 1: As part of that, they would insert this JavaScript code
Speaker 1: into their web code, which would insert the pixel into
Speaker 1: the website for the business. So now this pixel component
Speaker 1: is an integrated component within the target business and links
Speaker 1: back to Facebook. So you have a user on Facebook.
Speaker 1: Let's say you're on Facebook and you're browsing through your
Speaker 1: Facebook feed and you come across an ad that shows
Speaker 1: this really cute puppy dog leash, and you know that
Speaker 1: leash is going to look amazing with your beloved puppers.
Speaker 1: So you click on the ad and it takes you
Speaker 1: to the corresponding businesses shopping page for the leash. Maybe
Speaker 1: you actually add the leash to your online shopping cart,
Speaker 1: maybe you go so far as to purchase the leash. Now,
Speaker 1: in the old days, Facebook would be able to tell
Speaker 1: that you had clicked on the ad, but that would
Speaker 1: be it. That's all they would know. They knew that
Speaker 1: you clicked on the ad and you went to the page.
Speaker 1: What happened after that would have been a mystery. But
Speaker 1: because this particular business had installed the pixel within its
Speaker 1: web code, it can actually send data back to Facebook
Speaker 1: that not only did you visit the page, it could
Speaker 1: include everything else you did once you got to the page,
Speaker 1: including stuff like adding the leash to your cart or
Speaker 1: even purchasing it. Well, let's look at this same scenario,
Speaker 1: but let's reverse things a little bit. Let's say instead
Speaker 1: of you seeing an ad on Facebook, you open up
Speaker 1: your web browser and you're just shopping for a new
Speaker 1: dog leash. You're looking for a new leash for your dog,
Speaker 1: and your search takes you to this business. And you
Speaker 1: look at the listings for leashes on this business and
Speaker 1: you see this super cute doggie leash. Maybe you even
Speaker 1: click on it and add it to your online cart,
Speaker 1: but you leave the site without actually making the purchase.
Speaker 1: You you haven't really decided to pull the trigger yet,
Speaker 1: so you exit your browsing session. But this business has
Speaker 1: installed a meta pixel on its web page, right, So
Speaker 1: the code in the background on this business is web
Speaker 1: page notes that you've visited, and that it sees that
Speaker 1: you spent time on the site, that you browsed through
Speaker 1: it that you visited the the page for this particular leash,
Speaker 1: and you know the fact that you even put that
Speaker 1: leash in your online cart, but you didn't seal the deal,
Speaker 1: you didn't buy it, and through pixel it sends that
Speaker 1: data to Facebook. So Facebook gets the information about your
Speaker 1: visit to this business. Even though you didn't come to
Speaker 1: the business from Facebook itself, you naturally arrived at the
Speaker 1: business through your housing, through your searching. Right well, Facebook
Speaker 1: notices that this particular data relates to you, you know,
Speaker 1: a Facebook user, and that means that Facebook can now
Speaker 1: start serving up targeted ads for this business to you
Speaker 1: through your Facebook feed, which it's essentially reminding you about
Speaker 1: that adorable leash you saw and probably the fact that
Speaker 1: you could still buy it you just hopped on over
Speaker 1: to the business. So not only can Facebook provide valuable
Speaker 1: information about which ads on the platform are effective for
Speaker 1: specific users, Facebook can also offer to serve up ads
Speaker 1: to users who have already demonstrated an interest in the business. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, like a business, the's double value, right,
Speaker 1: they see value by being able to see how well
Speaker 1: their ads are performing on Facebook, but also they can
Speaker 1: have their ads that are in Facebook's database served up
Speaker 1: to users who had already visited the business independently. That
Speaker 1: is an enormous benefit. Like if the commercials on your television,
Speaker 1: know what shops you've been visiting, and can send you
Speaker 1: ads that relate to those shops. That would be transformational
Speaker 1: for the TV advertising business. It's also kind of something
Speaker 1: that's being talked about in smart TV circles, but it's
Speaker 1: already happening on the web. And another huge benefit from
Speaker 1: Facebook to these businesses is that Facebook is analyzing user
Speaker 1: behavior across more than a billion users worldwide. Right, that's
Speaker 1: a huge amount of information about user activity and preferences.
Speaker 1: So as data flows back from browser activity prompted by
Speaker 1: these pixel links between Facebook and businesses, Facebook can analyze
Speaker 1: the types of ads that are more effective than others.
Speaker 1: Which ones actually prompt people to go and visit a business,
Speaker 1: which ones go even a step further and convince people
Speaker 1: to purchase goods and services. This is what we call
Speaker 1: a conversion in the ad biz. It converts someone from
Speaker 1: being a browser to an actual customer. The information itself
Speaker 1: by itself has value, as it can mean the advertising
Speaker 1: strategies can be adjusted and evolved to become more effective
Speaker 1: over time. Plus, Facebook can dynamically target users who are
Speaker 1: more likely to respond positively to a specific type of advertisement.
Speaker 1: Now this type of data feedback loop continues to benefit
Speaker 1: all the parties involved. Well, I mean, you could argue
Speaker 1: that users are kind of left out of this discussion, right,
Speaker 1: like we the individual users who go to Facebook don't
Speaker 1: necessarily benefit so much from this all. You could argue
Speaker 1: that with this approach, you're theoretically going to at least
Speaker 1: encounter ads that are more relevant and interesting to you,
Speaker 1: So you could say that that's a benefit. But otherwise,
Speaker 1: we are of the product that's being exploited here. So
Speaker 1: Facebook was uncovering a really uncomfortable truth about all of us,
Speaker 1: and that's the fact that we're not maybe as special
Speaker 1: and unique as we like to think we are. I'm
Speaker 1: not judging you, by the way. I'm sure that you,
Speaker 1: the person listening to this, you are an amazing person.
Speaker 1: You've got quirks and you've got traits, You've got all
Speaker 1: these things that make you you, and you're the only
Speaker 1: you out there. But the truth of the matter is
Speaker 1: that when you start to accumulate data about more than
Speaker 1: a billion users, you're bound to start seeing some patterns emerge,
Speaker 1: and those patterns create what Facebook calls look alike audiences,
Speaker 1: meaning that Facebook could identify populations of users who are
Speaker 1: most likely to respond to specific products or specific messaging,
Speaker 1: because what they would do is they would say, this
Speaker 1: person here has responded positively to an AD, whether that's
Speaker 1: by clicking on it or actually going and becoming a conversion. Right,
Speaker 1: they can say that person marks a positive experience for
Speaker 1: that AD. We have analyzed that person's behavior, and we
Speaker 1: have identified all these other people who share similar qualities
Speaker 1: to that in this one particular arena, this very niche case.
Speaker 1: And by serving up the AD to that audience of
Speaker 1: people who have these similar traits, we have a higher
Speaker 1: likelihood of that AD having more positive responses. So that
Speaker 1: means that you could be more of a you could
Speaker 1: give more of a guarantee to your businesses that the
Speaker 1: right AD is going to go to the right people
Speaker 1: at the right time. And Facebook transformed online advertising, or
Speaker 1: at least it kicked it up a big old notch,
Speaker 1: because there are other companies that are doing very similar things,
Speaker 1: like Google is another example. All Right, we're gonna take
Speaker 1: another break. When we come back, I'm going to talk
Speaker 1: about another thing that was happening at the same time
Speaker 1: as the pixel debuting and how that became another important
Speaker 1: element with Facebook's advertising strategy. But first this break. Before
Speaker 1: the break, I alluded to the fact that something else
Speaker 1: was going on around the same time that the pixel
Speaker 1: was debuting, and that was the mobile revolution. By that,
Speaker 1: I mean that by two thousand thirteen, the smartphone was
Speaker 1: firmly established as a popular device, and more people were
Speaker 1: using smartphones to interact with the web. That was transforming
Speaker 1: the web itself. You want to talk about disruption, smartphones
Speaker 1: disrupted the web. Web page administrators were scrambling to optimize
Speaker 1: their sites for the mobile experience. If your audience has
Speaker 1: turned to mobile devices in order to access the web,
Speaker 1: it only makes sense to cater to that audience, or
Speaker 1: else you risk losing it. I saw that firsthand over
Speaker 1: at How Stuff Works as we tried to figure out
Speaker 1: the best way to remain elevant while still writing heavily
Speaker 1: researched articles. This was an uncertain time. In general. It
Speaker 1: was filled with experimentation across the web, as content creators
Speaker 1: were testing out different approaches, from creating more short form
Speaker 1: content designed to be consumed in little bites, to an
Speaker 1: over reliance on video content. In fact, we could do
Speaker 1: a whole episode on the mistakes that various sites and
Speaker 1: businesses made in an effort to stay relevant or to
Speaker 1: capture attention during this transition to the mobile web. Everything
Speaker 1: from Whimby to entire newsrooms getting gutted in favor of
Speaker 1: small and frankly criminally overworked teams of video producers. Full
Speaker 1: of that springs to mind, But the reason I bring
Speaker 1: it up here is that Facebook was able to unify
Speaker 1: the desktop and mobile experience when it comes to add customers.
Speaker 1: Because these sites, because they were connected to Facebook through pixels,
Speaker 1: and because users were connected to their Facebook accounts across
Speaker 1: multiple platforms like computers and smartphones, Facebook and its advertisers
Speaker 1: could track users even when those users were switching from
Speaker 1: one device to another. Because of this underlying connection to Facebook,
Speaker 1: both the businesses had it and the users had it.
Speaker 1: So here's another simple but very effective example. Let's say
Speaker 1: I'm on my phone on my Facebook app and I
Speaker 1: see that ad for a dog leash, and I tap
Speaker 1: on the ad using my phone and I look at
Speaker 1: the leash more closely. But let's say I don't do
Speaker 1: anything at the time other than that, and then later
Speaker 1: on I'm on my laptop and I'm working away and
Speaker 1: Facebook knows that I clicked on that ad in the
Speaker 1: mobile version, and that furthermore, it knows because of pixel
Speaker 1: that I didn't go any further than just looking at
Speaker 1: the leash. Maybe I've just forgotten about it, right. So
Speaker 1: let's say I'm on my laptop and I go to
Speaker 1: check my Facebook profile and I encounter the ad on
Speaker 1: my lad top profile, not my mobile one, or maybe
Speaker 1: a different ad, but it still features that leash, and
Speaker 1: that reminds me of that thing I was interested in
Speaker 1: but didn't actually purchase, and now maybe I will purchase it.
Speaker 1: My experience has tracked across devices from smartphones to laptop,
Speaker 1: and it can go the other way as well. So again,
Speaker 1: like maybe I'm on my phone and I'm browsing this
Speaker 1: shop and I see this leash, and then later I'm
Speaker 1: on my laptop and I go to my Facebook profile
Speaker 1: and there's the ad for the leash. So let's say
Speaker 1: you really want to deck out your home for Halloween.
Speaker 1: This is another great example because it's something that I
Speaker 1: can relate to because I like Halloween, My partner loves Halloween.
Speaker 1: We have friends who obsess over Halloween, and so we
Speaker 1: frequently are trying to come up with fun ways to
Speaker 1: decorate for Halloween, and so we will search for Halloween
Speaker 1: decorations and other content that relates to Halloween. Now, Facebook
Speaker 1: doesn't know what I'm searching for on Google, right, It
Speaker 1: can't see the things that I'm searching for. However, because
Speaker 1: at least some of the sites I visit happen to
Speaker 1: have pixel incorporated into them. There's this invisible Facebook presence there.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't, no, automatically it's there because I
Speaker 1: can't see it, right, this little transparent pixel. I don't
Speaker 1: know that it's there, but it is, and that pixel
Speaker 1: cookie is collecting information about my visit and sends that
Speaker 1: to Facebook. So then the next time I popped into Facebook,
Speaker 1: I would see an awful lot of Halloween themed ads
Speaker 1: popping up in my feed. And you know, maybe I
Speaker 1: would assume that part of the reason for that is
Speaker 1: just because we're approaching the holiday. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know when you start seeing Halloween ads, but August is
Speaker 1: become a pretty common for me, sometimes even in July,
Speaker 1: and so everyone is probably seeing at least some uptick
Speaker 1: in Halloween content. So you could say, all right, well,
Speaker 1: this is just because it's seasonal, But really the reason
Speaker 1: is because Facebook knows what I've been looking at. It
Speaker 1: knows what sites have been going to and what I've
Speaker 1: been browsing, and so Facebook has catered the ads that
Speaker 1: I see to be more likely to appeal to me
Speaker 1: and to get me to act on those ads. And
Speaker 1: this is dynamic obviously, so I'm not suggesting that from
Speaker 1: this moment forward, I will only get Halloween content. Instead,
Speaker 1: I would be likely to see stuff relating to whatever
Speaker 1: it is I've been browsing around that time. This is
Speaker 1: why you sometimes get that weird feeling that Facebook is
Speaker 1: spying on you. Like if you've been independently shopping for
Speaker 1: shoes online and then you notice that when you go
Speaker 1: to Facebook all your ads are relating to shoes, you
Speaker 1: might think Facebook's peeping on you, and it is kind
Speaker 1: of And the reason for that is because the sites
Speaker 1: you've been shopping on have pixel incorporated into them. So
Speaker 1: Facebook knows what you're shopping for because of these behind
Speaker 1: the scenes agreements with these stores, and it's more likely
Speaker 1: to happen as you visit online shops. But even other
Speaker 1: types of sites can have pixel installed within them. So
Speaker 1: while we mostly are thinking about like online stores or
Speaker 1: companies that offer a specific service. You can sometimes find
Speaker 1: Pixel installed on things that you wouldn't immediately associate with commerce.
Speaker 1: So this means that if your job is to, I
Speaker 1: don't know, research various stuff online in order to make
Speaker 1: a podcast, your Facebook feed ads might reflect that and
Speaker 1: show you lots of ads that you're not actually interested in,
Speaker 1: but somehow relate back to whatever it was you were researching. Uh.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess that I actually haven't visited Facebook
Speaker 1: in a really long time, so I can't say that
Speaker 1: for sure from a first person perspective, but it is
Speaker 1: the sort of thing that I noticed occasionally. So again,
Speaker 1: the pixel tool works in both directions. It's like installing
Speaker 1: a tiny little spy in every store, and it's well
Speaker 1: every store that opts to work with Facebook in this way.
Speaker 1: So the stores want the spy there because the spy
Speaker 1: knows which Facebook users have visited the store, it can
Speaker 1: reinforce the store's presence by feeding ads for the store
Speaker 1: to those users whenever they're on Facebook. Facebook wants the
Speaker 1: spy there because it helps the platform make its tools
Speaker 1: more effective, and if they're more effective, then they are
Speaker 1: more valuable to customers, which means Facebook can charge more
Speaker 1: money for them. Now, I know it sounds like I'm
Speaker 1: saying the same thing over and over, but I really
Speaker 1: wanted to drive all this home to explain how this
Speaker 1: system works and how your information factors into it. Now,
Speaker 1: when a business chooses to use Pixel, they actually have
Speaker 1: options when it comes to the types of information it
Speaker 1: will share with Facebook and how Facebook should treat ads
Speaker 1: for the business. For example, the lookalike audience tool is
Speaker 1: an option you can choose. You don't have to use it.
Speaker 1: So with a lookalike audience tool, Facebook will pull information
Speaker 1: from the business's website. It will look from matches and
Speaker 1: Facebook's profiles for users who have visited that business, and
Speaker 1: then search for other our profiles that shows similarity with
Speaker 1: the users who have actively visited the business and serve
Speaker 1: them the ad in order to increase the scope the
Speaker 1: reach of this business. This brings us to no Vent.
Speaker 1: So that was the the health care business I was
Speaker 1: talking about the top of this show. No Vent has
Speaker 1: this web based portal tool called my Chart. In May
Speaker 1: of Novent pushed out a marketing campaign on Facebook to
Speaker 1: raise patient awareness of my Chart, with the hopes of
Speaker 1: providing services to more patients who otherwise were isolated due
Speaker 1: to the pandemic. So no Vent entered into the Pixel
Speaker 1: program so that it could track the performance of the
Speaker 1: the campaign on Facebook, presumably also tracking the performance of
Speaker 1: the tool itself in order to get more insight onto
Speaker 1: what was working in what needed to be tweaked, and
Speaker 1: all of that makes sense, But the problem was that
Speaker 1: the way no Vent had configured its Pixel agreement meant
Speaker 1: that Facebook was getting more information about patients then was intended.
Speaker 1: No Vent issued a statement about this whole thing, and
Speaker 1: it sounds to me like the company wasn't really fully
Speaker 1: aware of the two way nature of this arrangement with Pixel.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's an unfair assumption. I'm just drawing it based
Speaker 1: upon the statement itself. But anyway, people who visited Novent's
Speaker 1: site where Pixel was installed, or people who used related
Speaker 1: services where no Vent was ultimately offering the services but
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily the the the entity in the forefront things
Speaker 1: like scheduling a vaccine, well, inadvertently, these people were sharing
Speaker 1: their personal information, including their activities relating to healthcare, with Facebook.
Speaker 1: No Vent sent out alerts to affected users, including folks
Speaker 1: who weren't even aware that they were Novant customers because
Speaker 1: again they were doing stuff like scheduling a vaccination through
Speaker 1: an affiliate, but they weren't directly dealing with NOVN, or
Speaker 1: at least they weren't knowingly directly dealing with NOVN, and
Speaker 1: they would get these notifications. And it also included people
Speaker 1: like our who was the one who wrote to me
Speaker 1: in the first place, who don't have Facebook profiles, because again,
Speaker 1: the information was sent to Facebook that related to people
Speaker 1: who were active on this Novent page, whether they were
Speaker 1: Facebook users or not. So you didn't have to have
Speaker 1: a profile for you to be affected. Now, even in
Speaker 1: the US, where privacy laws are pretty darn pathetic, we
Speaker 1: still have strict standards when it comes to medical data,
Speaker 1: and so no Vent was trying to get ahead of
Speaker 1: this and offering services like credit monitoring to certain affected folks. Now,
Speaker 1: according to no Vent, the vast majority of people who
Speaker 1: are affected by this, they didn't have information like their
Speaker 1: Social Security number or any other financial info leaked that
Speaker 1: that was not part of these uh these these transmissions,
Speaker 1: but the statement implies that at least in a few
Speaker 1: cases that did happen, which is a big old yikes. Now,
Speaker 1: Novents stressed that meta had shown no sign of having
Speaker 1: inappropriately used this information, and that while this was an
Speaker 1: improper example of sharing information like private and sensitive data,
Speaker 1: it didn't go any further than that, at least according
Speaker 1: to the statement. But there are some developing class action
Speaker 1: lawsuits that are aimed at Facebook and some hospitals that
Speaker 1: indicate that this is not always the case. It may
Speaker 1: be the case with Novent, it may be that Facebook
Speaker 1: did not act in properly with the data beyond the
Speaker 1: fact that it received data it shouldn't have. But in
Speaker 1: other cases, at least according to allegations in lawsuits, other
Speaker 1: things have developed. So in early August of this year,
Speaker 1: two for those listening from the future, two different proposed
Speaker 1: class action lawsuits alleged that Facebook and certain U S
Speaker 1: hospitals had violated patient privacy laws through pick full So.
Speaker 1: The lawsuits claim that a lot of hospitals, in fact,
Speaker 1: thirty three of the top one hospitals in the United
Speaker 1: States according to the markup, had inserted meta pixel into
Speaker 1: their hospital websites, and that at seven of those hospitals
Speaker 1: that installation happened on password protected patient portals, which is
Speaker 1: a lot of alliteration. And also it sounds not good
Speaker 1: with a capital in in a capital G. And since
Speaker 1: Pixel can track user activity such as which options a
Speaker 1: user clicks on as they navigate a patient portal where
Speaker 1: Pixel has been installed, that means Facebook was gathering up
Speaker 1: data relating to people's health conditions. So one lawsuit alleges
Speaker 1: that a patient, after using her hospital's portal, visited her
Speaker 1: Facebook profile and saw that the ads that she was
Speaker 1: encountering in her profile all related to her medical conditions.
Speaker 1: Now that is a huge problem if it is true,
Speaker 1: because not only is Facebook receiving sensitive medical information which
Speaker 1: it already should not be doing, it is then acting
Speaker 1: on the information in order to profit from it, which
Speaker 1: it absolutely shouldn't be doing. That's a big old you
Speaker 1: and raises tons of ethical concerns. Now, when it comes
Speaker 1: to placing blame for this, you can point fingers both
Speaker 1: at Facebook slash Meta and at the hospitals which the
Speaker 1: lawsuits are doing. Meta says that it's really the responsibility
Speaker 1: of Pixel customers to ensure that they have the right
Speaker 1: to share the information that they're going to send to Meta.
Speaker 1: That Meta is not responsible for the info that a
Speaker 1: endpoint shares with them because they're they're not in control
Speaker 1: of that. That's the collection point, and it should be
Speaker 1: at the collection point where the end business makes certain
Speaker 1: it's only electing the information it is legally allowed to
Speaker 1: share with Meta, which kind of makes sense, right, And
Speaker 1: then Meta also says that it actively filters out sensitive
Speaker 1: health data. Now, the lawsuit says that this is mostly
Speaker 1: posturing on Meta's part, and that Meta has failed to
Speaker 1: enforce its own policies, and that even allowing Pixel to
Speaker 1: be on healthcare websites, even for for Meta to market
Speaker 1: Pixel to healthcare companies, shows that Meta is not taking
Speaker 1: a responsible and in this case, legal stance when it
Speaker 1: comes to sensitive health data. The lawsuit also names the
Speaker 1: hospitals as defendants, which I add here because I think
Speaker 1: it's only fair that we not let hospitals off the hook.
Speaker 1: It's not like the hospitals were forced to use Pixel,
Speaker 1: and I think you can make a very strong argument
Speaker 1: that the hospitals have the obligation to research Pixel thoroughly
Speaker 1: and to ensure that their use of the tool would
Speaker 1: not compromise patient data, and clearly that did not happen.
Speaker 1: Assuming that the allegations and these proposed lawsuits are accurate,
Speaker 1: of course, if it turns out these allegations are baseless,
Speaker 1: then maybe the hospitals did their due diligence and that's great,
Speaker 1: but according to these lawsuits, that did not happen. Alright.
Speaker 1: So let's say your Facebook user and you do not
Speaker 1: want those personalized ads popping up whenever you visit Facebook
Speaker 1: because you think it's creepy. Well, you can actually choose
Speaker 1: to change your off Facebook activity in your user settings.
Speaker 1: You can go into your user settings, find off Facebook activity,
Speaker 1: and you can turn those targeted ads off. So doing
Speaker 1: that means that Facebook is no longer going to serve
Speaker 1: you ads based upon your browsing behaviors, which is great, right,
Speaker 1: except it's not totally great because Facebook is still completely
Speaker 1: tracking you. The tracking is still happening, you're just not
Speaker 1: seeing the ads based off of it. So it's not
Speaker 1: gonna serve you up ads based on the information it's tracking.
Speaker 1: But the proliferation of meta pixel across the web means
Speaker 1: that frequently your browsing behavior is just being logged and
Speaker 1: sent to Facebook anyway, and so it's building up a
Speaker 1: profile on you, even if it can't act directly on
Speaker 1: that within the Facebook experience. So if you have a
Speaker 1: Facebook account, and if you're not browsing in incognito mode
Speaker 1: and maybe using a VPN, chances are Facebook is able
Speaker 1: to link your behavior to you the person. Now, if
Speaker 1: you are browsing in incognito and through a VPN, Facebook
Speaker 1: is probably not going to figure out it's you. The
Speaker 1: company will have a data point that someone went to
Speaker 1: this website and did something, but I won't know that
Speaker 1: that someone was you. But then it's hard to do
Speaker 1: useful stuff when you're going pure incognito and VPN. When
Speaker 1: it comes to commerce, it gets tricky. Then. Now, you're
Speaker 1: also going to still see ads on Facebook if you
Speaker 1: opt out of this off Facebook tracking activity is just
Speaker 1: that the ads won't be targeted to you. So you
Speaker 1: could argue that the only thing that really changes is
Speaker 1: that you're not confronted with your browsing activities through your
Speaker 1: ad experience on Facebook. But everything else remains the same.
Speaker 1: All Right. That was it for Meta Slash Facebook Pixel.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoyed that. If you have suggestions for
Speaker 1: topics I should cover in future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: reach out to me. You can leave a voice message
Speaker 1: on the I Heart radio app. Just go to tech
Speaker 1: Stuff hit that little microphone icon or leave me a
Speaker 1: tweet like our diad and the handle we use is
Speaker 1: tech stuff h SWS and I'll talk to you again
Speaker 1: really soon. Tech Stuff is an I Heart Radio production.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the i
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Speaker 1: your favorite shows.