You may have heard the modern saying “if you’re not paying for it, you are the product.” The phrase has commonly been applied to social media, and Facebook Inc. seems dedicated to proving the saying right.

Yesterday, Facebook announced a new feature for marketers called Topic Data, which will allow advertisers to see exactly what subjects different demographics talk about, including the brands and products they use and the types of activities they participate in.

For example, according to Facebook, the maker of a hair de-frizzing product might see which users complain about the effects of humidity on their hair, and a fashion retailer might see which of their products are being talked about the most in order to make stocking decisions. Topic Data could also be used to measure overall brand sentiment on Facebook.

Helping marketers “generate more effective campaigns”

Fortunately, Facebook’s new Topic Data feature does not tell marketers the conversation habits of individual people. Instead, it tracks data based on different demographics divided by gender, race, place of residence, age, and so on.

The social network is quick to note that user data is kept private, and it is all kept anonymized and aggregated with no personally identifiable information. The results of the program are based off analyses of the data rather than providing marketers the topic information itself. In a statement, Facebook noted that this type of information had already been visible to marketers in the past, but Topic Data gives them a wider sample size for more accurate measurements.

“This is in response to interest we’ve been getting from marketers,” Facebook’s director of ads product marketing Matthew Idema told The Wall Street Journal. “They’ve been asking us to provide insights to help them generate more effective campaigns on and off of Facebook.”

Topic Data is the result of a newly announced partnership between Facebook and Silicon Valley “Human Data Intelligence” company DataSift. According to Facebook, Topic Data is “using DataSift’s technology to power the platforms that turn the data into insights.”

Topic Data is currently only available to a small portion of DataSift’s partners in the U.S. and the U.K., but Facebook plans on rolling the feature out to more businesses in the future.

photo credit: clasesdeperiodismo via photopin cc