It looks like the days of Facebook developers choosing any advertiser may soon be coming to an end, as the company has announced that developers will only be able to select advertisers who have publicly agreed to Facebook’s TOS.
Today, we’ve modified our Platform policies to require that developers operating on Facebook.com only use these ad providers in their apps. We will begin enforcing this policy on 2/28, which should provide you and other developers the time required to switch ad providers or to help us sign terms with the ad providers you may be using. We will continue to add other ad providers in the coming weeks. If your ad provider is not on this list, we encourage you to contact them to determine if they are planning on signing our terms. (Facebook Developer Blog)
While a few developers may grumble about the change (especially if they are using an lucrative ad agency not on Facebook’s approved list), this latest change should make the social site a little bit safer for their users.
This measure should also help reduce the chances of malicious advertisers acquiring information about users without their consent.
Currently there are 41 advertising agencies listed as of this post, and it would not be surprising to see that number double as the deadline for inclusion approaches.
