In short: Acxiom is a online data broker, however one with a twist: a broker which is intimately linked to the data collected by Facebook on its 2 billion users.

Which these days is a problem.

On Wednesday, in the aftermath of the ongoing Cambridge Analytica scandal, Bloomberg first reported that Facebook announced it would end its "Partner Categories" program, which fed data to firms like Acxiom, and would no longer let advertisers use information from 3rd party data brokers, again like Acxiom. 

"We believe this step, winding down over the next six months, will help improve people's privacy on Facebook," Graham Mudd, Facebook product marketing director, said in a statement about the change in policy on data brokers on Wednesday. The company declined to give details on the larger review of its practices.