Menlo Park, Calif.—Facebook Inc. is partnering with major database providers to gain insight into offline customer behavior, in order to further inform its targeted ad offerings.
Facebook is partnering with Acxiom Corp., Epsilon and Datalogix to provide to its advertisers information about prospects' in-person purchases, and match product loyalty card members with Facebook users via phone numbers and email addresses in order to deliver more-targeted Facebook advertising.
According to BtoB sibling publication Advertising Age, the matching will be "anonymized," meaning that only broad categories of purchasing habits will be identified, not the habits of individuals, and that adoption will be contingent on acceptance by corporate legal departments.
