Facebook's New Pitch to Advertisers: We Can ID Groups That Buy Your Products

Facebook is now able to connect the dots between users on its network and their purchasing habits, and is using that data to pitch advertisers.

To be sure, Facebook is not identifying users by name to advertisers. Instead, it is matching up its own data with that of partner Datalogix in a double-blind fashion. That is, although Facebook can ID a user and then find a match via Datalogix, specific information about the user is not shared with advertisers.

Brad Smallwood, head of measurement and insights at Facebook, presented some preliminary findings at the Advertising Research Foundation's Re:think conference in New York on Wednesday. Measuring 22 recent Facebook campaigns against data from 70 million consumers, Facebook found that just advertising on Facebook provided a 22% lift in ROI.