Facebook to include AdChoices privacy icon with display ads

Menlo Park, Calif.—After much lobbying by the advertising industry, Facebook Inc. will begin displaying the AdChoices icon along with its Facebook Exchange display ads to provide viewers with more information about behavioral ad tracking.

The AdChoices icon—the letter “I” inside a blue triangle—has been promoted by such marketing organizations as the Association of National Advertisers, the Direct Marketing Association and the Interactive Advertising Bureau as a self-regulatory ad privacy program. Clicking on the icon provides users with information about why they're seeing that particular ad and allows opt-outs.

Facebook is not making the icon as noticeable as it those organizations intended. The symbol only shows up when users mouse over a gray “X” above the ads, according to a report in Advertising Age, a sibling publication of BtoB.