As Facebook has become increasingly popular, marketers have found it far easier to combine our online personas with our offline selves to enable better ad targeting, leading to concerns around how much data do they actually have.

However the Cambridge Analytica data breach could emerge as the ‘line in the sand’ moment for not just Facebook but online data privacy as a whole.

Over the last decade, Facebook has evolved from a social networking website initially only open to university alumni in the US into a mass, consumer-focused service. Today, Facebook is one of the most-used websites on the Internet with more than 2bn users across the world. However, the rising popularity of social networking has also raised questions about internet privacy as social networking websites encourage users to be more public about who they are, what they like, and who their friends on social networks are. The recent coverage of the Facebook – Cambridge Analytica data debacle will only serve to increase the focus of users and regulators on issues around data privacy in an increasingly connected world. In this report, we analyse the recent events, Facebook’s response to the data breach and the potential implications for the online advertising market.