With this feature, all users are able to see the content of a certain page running ads. Facebook said this transparency can help prevent organizations from using ads for bad purposes.

Everyone from small online shops to big ad firms believe the policy shows Facebook’s ‘dictatorship’ imposed on advertisements.

The fine line between ‘transparency’ and ‘security’

“It is still unclear about the effects the ‘transparency’ can bring, but it is clear that other people will be able to know what their rivals are doing, which ads the rivals are running, and which products they are designing,” said Duy Phuong, a marketing expert in HCMC. 

Phuong said that if the information is exposed and exploited effectively by rivals, the enterprises advertising on Facebook will feel more pressure.

“Everybody has his own way of exploiting information, but in the end, this will be against advertisers,” Phuong said.

When a business decides to post content on Facebook and spend money to run ads, this will make public the information on the social network.

“However, the problem here is the way they choose the groups of clients who can access the information. Naturally, it’s not always possible for rivals to see all the ads you are running,” Phuong said.

“The systematic recapitulation of ads will give business rivals more detailed information to analyze and copy others’ business activities,” he explained.

The factors such as business strategy, number of ads, products and ideas are ‘secret assets’ of enterprises, and Facebook users should only be given the opportunities to see the content if they are in the groups of customers the ads target. 

Some people had even changed their gender declaration to ‘female’ to be able to see the ads targeting women to keep watch over rivals’ activities.

“But now, with the new policy, anyone can see ads in the most systematic and detailed way,” said Mai Thanh Phu, an ad expert. If business ideas are copied, this will cause big disadvantages to businesses.

Facebook’s new policy will create favorable conditions for rivals to copy business ideas. 

“Businesses which are developing products similar to that of other businesses will just need to access rivals’ pages, copy ideas and change names to be able to use. They won’t not have to spend money on making content and writing ideas for ads,” Phu explained.

To settle the problem, businesses have two options. First, continually create ad content. Second, spend big money to run ads to obtain dominance over rivals. In both options, Facebook will be the biggest beneficiary.

Thanh Lich