Facebook moves marketers to main Audience Insights service
Facebook has said it will close its Audience Insights application programming interface by the end of the year, with the social vendors that used it being transferred to a different version of Audience Insights, which supplies data directly to marketers. The decision has divided advertisers, with some suspicious that the alternative version of Audience Insights, which has no intermediary, raises issues of unvetted metrics. Audience Insights aggregates user data in areas such as demographic, education, working life and location, and observers have suggested the restructure of Audience Insights will form part of an effort to find new revenue streams.

Facebook has long held a tight grip on what data advertisers can and cannot access. Now, it’s pulling some of the reins away from social media vendors as it shutters its Audience Insight API.

This week, Facebook quietly shut down its research tool, which allowed social vendors including Spredfast to build billion-dollar businesses by tapping into the social network’s firehose of data and crunch vast amounts of user information for marketers.

Audience Insights digs up aggregated demographic, interest and lifestyle data, including age, education levels, job titles, hobbies, family size, income and location.