How to disable interest-based advertisement on Facebook

Advertising companies have various methods at their disposal to display advertisement to web users. The best, from a business perspective, is to know as much as possible about a user to display ads catered to potential interests.

If a user visits a lot of car sites, then car ads may be the way to go. This level of understanding can only be achieved by tracking users on the Internet.

Advertisers need to know which sites are visited by the user and which apps are being used to create a profile of that user that is then being a deciding factor in displaying ads to that user.

Some services and advertisers let you opt-out of that. Opting out does not mean that ads won't be displayed anymore but that information about your activities on the web are not used anymore to display ads.

So, instead of seeing car ads all over the place because you have visited car sites in the past, you may see other types of ads based on your location in the world and other data that advertisers have at their disposal.

Facebook and its partners use interest based ads by default. It is possible to disable those interest-based ads on Facebook and third-party sites by opting-out.

Opting-out is not account based but based on cookies. Facebook is a partner of several services that allow you to opt-out from behavioral advertising.

To opt out of interest-based ads on Facebook visit one of the following websites and select Facebook (and others if you like) from the list of participating companies that allow you to opt-out.

• Digital Advertising Alliance US
• Digital Advertising Alliance Canada
• European Digital Advertising Alliance

If you select the US website a list of participating companies is displayed. Select Facebook from the list and any other company that you want to include as well.

Hit the submit your choices button afterwards to set the cookie on your system that indicates to the selected services that you have opted-out.

Facebook picks up on that on the device, browser or app that you are using and will apply it to all other apps and devices you run it on.

This means that you have to make the selection only once to have it applied to all your devices.

According to Facebook, mobile users should be able to use the app settings to opt-out as well but that does not seem to be available right now and is likely still being rolled out to all devices and accounts.

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