Facebook is one of the most popular social media platforms, with over 2.8 billion monthly active users as of 2020. With so many users, Facebook has become a treasure trove of user data that can offer valuable insights into demographics, interests, behaviors, and more. But what kind of demographic data can be obtained from Facebook, and how accessible is this information?
Facebook’s Data Policy
According to Facebook’s Data Policy, the company collects three main categories of data from its users:
- Data users provide: This includes information users share on their profile, such as name, contact info, interests, photos, videos, etc. It also includes any other information users actively submit to Facebook, such as posts, comments, messages, etc.
- Data from user activity: This encompasses the actions users take on Facebook, such as liking pages, clicking on ads, interacting with other users, etc. It also includes device data like location, IP address, browser/device info.
- Data from partners: Facebook receives data about users’ activities off Facebook from partner companies, advertisers, app developers, and publishers.
Facebook uses this data to customize and improve their services. They also use it for advertising purposes, to show users relevant ads based on their interests and demographics.
Accessing Publicly Available Information
So what demographic data can be accessed from Facebook profiles? For the average user, the amount of accessible information depends on a profile’s privacy settings. With open, public settings, quite a lot of demographic data is readily available. This includes:
- Name
- Profile photo
- Cover photo
- Age/birthday
- Gender
- Location
- Relationship status
- Workplace and education info
- UserInfo (about me, contact info, etc.)
- Pages liked
- Groups joined
Pages liked and groups joined can provide insight into a user’s interests, views, hobbies, and more. Relationship status, work info, and education give indications of lifestyle and socioeconomic status. Photos offer additional context into demographics through depicted locations, activities, and people.
Location Data
For users who enable location services, Facebook can collect precise location data through GPS, WiFi hotspots, Bluetooth beacons, and cell tower information. Users may share locations in posts, photos, check-ins, and other activities. Facebook uses location data for ad targeting and notifications, among other purposes.
At an aggregated, anonymized level, Facebook provides some geographic demographic insights to advertisers and researchers through tools like Facebook IQ. This can include generalized data on age, gender, relationship status, interests, lifestyle, and more for defined regions, cities, neighborhoods, and locations.
Interests and Behaviors
Pages liked, groups joined, posted content, and browsing/search history on Facebook can provide a good sense of users’ interests and behaviors. Interests might include sports, music, movies, fashion, politics, hobbies, and more. Some potential behavioral indicators include social causes supported, events attended, businesses frequented, product preferences, and travel destinations.
Facebook categorizes users into custom audiences or segments for ad targeting based on interests and behaviors. While advertisers don’t get individual user data, they can target specific demographics and remarket ads based on users’ Facebook activities.
Limitations on Access
That covers the types of demographic data generally accessible from public profiles. But there are limitations:
- Private profiles reveal very little personal data. Only public data like profile photo, name, and cover photo are displayed.
- Security settings allow users to limit viewers for posts, photos, friends list, and other info.
- Facebook reviews and restricts use of tools and methods companies can use to gather data from profiles.
- Facebook’s API limits third-party developer access to friends data, posts, interests, and other profile info.
- Facebook penalizes scrapers and crawlers that aggressively collect public profile data.
So while Facebook offers a wealth of demographic data, both Facebook and users limit access through privacy restrictions and data policies. Public profiles offer general demographic context, but more in-depth personal data requires explicit user consent.
Advertising Audience Insights
Facebook offers advertisers and marketers access to aggregated demographic insights through its Facebook Ads Manager and Facebook Business Suite. Some of the audience data available includes:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Languages
- Education level
- Relationship status
- Interest categories
- Purchase behaviors
- Device usage
This allows advertisers to analyze target markets and fine-tune ads for specific demographics. Facebook determines these audience attributes based on profiles, self-reported info, activity on Facebook products, partner data, and modeling. Importantly, advertisers do not get data on individual users, just aggregated insights.
Interest Categories
Facebook’s interest categories for ad targeting include broad preferences like sports, food, travel, fashion, and music. More specific subgroups delve deeper into hobbies, political views, occupations, and other defined interests. Some examples include:
- New England Patriots fans
- Luxury travelers
- Gamers
- Dog owners
- Small business owners
Interest categories help advertisers engage Facebook audiences passionate about certain subjects. The categories derive from likes, profile info, activity on Facebook products, and partner data.
Purchase Behaviors
Facebook can also classify audiences based on purchase behaviors and intent signals. Some examples include:
- Frequent luxury shoppers
- New vehicle intenders
- Home improvement shoppers
- Fashion and beauty purchasers
Determining purchasing interests helps advertisers promote relevant products. Facebook infers these purchase affinities from activity across its family of apps and websites, as well as partner data.
Facebook Business Solutions
Beyond its advertising tools, Facebook offers some additional services that provide more detailed demographic data:
Facebook Data for Good
This program provides anonymized and aggregated insights to nonprofits, academics, and humanitarian groups working on crises, environmental issues, and community development. Data includes age, gender, movement maps, population density, disease forecasts, and more.
Facebook Marketing API
This allows marketers to extract aggregated analytic data programmatically from Ads Manager to gain customer insights. Information includes demographics, interests, behaviors, and campaign metrics.
Customer Audiences from Partners
For additional data on existing customers, advertisers can create Custom Audiences by uploading contact lists with hashed customer info like emails or phone numbers. This allows targeted ads and demographics insights on current user bases.
Surveys
Facebook occasionally runs surveys through apps like Viewpoints to gather first-party data on usage, demographics, purchasing, and more directly from users. Participation is voluntary and rewarded.
Researcher Access
Academic researchers can also apply for access to more in-depth, anonymized Facebook data:
- Aggregated Insights: Includes aggregated statistics on age, gender, location, language, posted content, pages liked, advertising, etc.
- Crowdtangle: Allows analysis of trends, statistics, and spread of content across public Facebook pages and groups.
- Social Science One: Offers privacy-protected access to datasets for approved research into elections, digital divide, health outcomes, and more.
- Data for Good: Provides maps, movement data, disease models, and tools for human crises and environmental research.
Access is tightly controlled and limited to noncommercial research initiatives that align with Facebook’s criteria.
Third-Party Data Providers
While Facebook keeps a tight grip on internally sourced user data, some third-party data brokers supplement insights into Facebook audiences. Sources like LiveRamp, Acxiom, Experian, and Oracle offer additional demographic data for marketing including:
- Names
- Addresses
- Phone numbers
- Emails
- Gender
- Age
- Income
- Home ownership
- Vehicle ownership
- Occupation
- Education
- Shopping patterns
Marketers can potentially combine this external data with Facebook’s interest categories for richer audience profiles. However, privacy restrictions limit integration of personal identifiers like emails or phone numbers.
Facebook Surveys and Research
To complement its platform data, Facebook also conducts periodic surveys and research studies to collect self-reported information on usage, attitudes, demographics, and purchasing. For example:
- Advertising Research Studies: Research projects and surveys analyzing ad recall, brand awareness, purchasing, and perceptions of Facebook and Instagram ads.
- Multi-Country Studies: Large national surveys conducted across the U.S., Brazil, Germany, France, India, Indonesia, Japan, Turkey, and the UK measuring behavior, attitudes, and technology adoption.
- Omnibus Surveys: Covering usage, purchasing, media consumption, opinions, and demographics across US, UK, Australia, France, and Germany.
These studies help supplement Facebook’s insights with directly collected demographic and preference data from consenting user samples.
Conclusion
In summary, Facebook offers varying degrees of demographic data access:
- Public profiles provide general demographic and interest information for ordinary users.
- More detailed aggregate data is available to advertisers for audience targeting and analysis.
- Researchers can apply for access to anonymized and aggregated datasets.
- Data access is becoming more privacy-focused and limited in light of public concerns.
While Facebook has vast amounts of demographic data, recent controversies have pushed the company to tighten up its data sharing policies. Users now have much more control over personal data access through privacy settings. Moving forward, gathering in-depth demographics from Facebook requires both technical know-how and adherence to Facebook’s data policies.