{"id":79894,"date":"2016-11-03T08:22:28","date_gmt":"2016-11-03T08:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.smartinsights.com\/?p=79894"},"modified":"2016-11-03T08:26:33","modified_gmt":"2016-11-03T08:26:33","slug":"uk-insurance-company-banned-accessing-personal-facebook-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.smartinsights.com\/customer-relationship-management\/customer-privacy\/uk-insurance-company-banned-accessing-personal-facebook-data\/","title":{"rendered":"UK insurance company banned for accessing personal Facebook data"},"content":{"rendered":"

Innovative First Car Quote project stalls just before launch<\/h2>\n

You'll know that Facebook is the largest social media network in the world with over 1.13 billion daily active users and 1.03 billion mobile daily active users. Advertising on Facebook<\/a> has major advantages as companies can proactively target individuals based on their profile, that\u2019s their gender, age, location and many other demographics. You can even target users based on their favourite TV programmes. Advertising IS Facebook\u2019s business, looking at the revenue for the last quarter that was 6,239 billion US dollars, which represents a 63% increase since 2015.<\/p>\n

Whilst Facebook captures more data than any other network, it has detailed policies on how the data can be used. It states \u201cAdvertisers are responsible for understanding and complying with all applicable laws and regulations. Failure to comply may result in a variety of consequences, including the cancellation of ads you have placed and termination of your account<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re interested in learning more, you can read Facebook\u2019s full policies here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Advertisers don\u2019t gain any of the data unless an individual decides to click on an ad and subsequently share more information, say on a website. So one of the only ways to access the full range of Facebook data is to create an app.<\/p>\n

Creating an app is a major undertaking. It takes months, costs tens of thousands of pounds and may not achieve the desired results.<\/p>\n

The Admiral firstcarquote\u00a0quoting app using Facebook data<\/h3>\n

UK insurance company Admiral built an innovative app aimed at younger drivers which had a value proposition of offering discounts based on improved knowledge about the insurer's risk by accessing the social media profile for drivers asking for quotes.\u00a0The issue was that it was claimed they would conduct content analysis on people\u2019s posts to assess what they would pay as a young driver. In fact, this feature was optional, but that hasn't been enough to apparently kill the project.<\/p>\n

The initiative, called firstcarquote, and was officially meant to launch this week but that was delayed at the last minute on Tuesday night. Dan Lines, the project lead at Admiral described<\/a> the aim of the project:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is very much a test product for us. This is innovative, it is the first time anyone has done this,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is a test, this is early days. The data will only ever provide a discount. We will work through that and learn more.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cI think the future is unknown. We don\u2019t know if people are prepared to share their data. If we find people aren\u2019t sharing their data, then we won\u2019t ever get to consider that [expanding firstcarquote].\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"case-admiral-app-20161102\"<\/p>\n

The project is an interesting example of a social media and mobile focused campaign. They could easily use Facebook ads to generate awareness of the app. The first step is to agree the objective of the ad campaign \u2013 it this case it would be \u2018app installs\u2019. The second step is to select the target audience. Insurance is a location-based product, so Admiral would start by selecting \u2018UK\u2019 which would give them 31 million people. That\u2019s a large audience and an expensive one to target, so the next step is to narrow the audience down, using demographic filters. If I scale down to a specific age range of those aged 18 to 22, this reduces to 5.2 million people.<\/p>\n

\"fb-a-audience\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The aim was to advertise the app to this group. This is a straightforward process in the Facebook ads panel as it\u2019s a specific objective that you can select.<\/p>\n

\"fb-app-installs\"<\/p>\n

Admiral would need to use some form of rules-based Artificial Intelligence to mine the content in the individuals\u2019 posts. You may wonder how the app can see the posts, well if you\u2019ve downloaded an app (Candy Crush, Funky Pigeon, EventBrite, Pinterest, Instagram and more) you have probably allowed the app permission to gain access to certain data.<\/p>\n

For example, apps can gain access, with your permission, to a wide range of your data, including:<\/p>\n