Meta Centralizes Certain Settings From Facebook, Instagram, Messenger in Accounts Center

Meta is moving certain settings across its family of applications into its Accounts Center to ease the process of managing settings for people who use multiple apps.

Accounts Center is available via the settings menu in Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, and settings including Ad Preferences, passwords, personal details and security can now be found there.

Meta shared the example that people can make their ad topic preferences consistent across their Facebook and Instagram accounts by adding those accounts to the same Accounts Center.

The company also detailed improvements to some of its ad settings controls.

Activity Information, data about a user’s activity from partners’ control, is being updated to help people better understand how their activity sent from other apps and websites is used to power the ads they see, and Meta is making it easier for people to digest their options when it comes to seeing ads shown by Meta on other apps and websites.

The company is exploring new ways to give users the ability to see more ads about things that interest them and fewer about things that do not.

Meta said in a blog post Thursday, “Adding more than one account to the same Accounts Center is optional—if you want to keep your accounts in separate Accounts Centers, you can. For people who choose to do so, they will still have access to the same settings, and they can apply them to individual accounts.”

The company tweaked some of the terminology it uses for certain advertising metrics, changing people to Accounts Center accounts, which will be reflected in its ads measurement tools and other reporting surfaces such as Ads Help Center, Ads Manager, Ads Reporting, Commerce Insights and Instagram Insights.

Meta explained, “Our calculation methodology for these metrics is not changing. The numbers you see in your reporting are the same as before; the only difference is the name. For example, if a person has one Facebook account and one Instagram account that are linked, they will be counted as one Accounts Center account. However, if those same accounts are not linked, they will be counted as two separate Accounts Center accounts for ads planning and measurement purposes.”

All of these updates will begin rolling out Thursday and gradually go to all Facebook, Instagram and Messenger users over the coming months, and Meta said in its blog post, “We’re also continuing to look for opportunities to centralize additional settings in Accounts Center going forward, so that people can more easily manage their preferences across our products.”