Facebook ads are changing. On January 19, 2022, digital marketers will not be able to target users-based interests like:
LGBT culture
Muslim holidays
Social issues
How come?
Facebook is agreeing to make some parts of their advertising platform less personalized to
“better match people’s evolving expectations of how advertisers may reach them on our platform…”.
Basically, this is not a change Facebook/Meta is making to improve the ad experience. Since 2007 until now most of the changes to the platform had been done to improve the digital advertiser and consumer’s experience.
Due to social pressure on the social media giant consultants in the civil rights and policy sectors (and their stakeholders) have been brought into the company. They are requesting these updates.
I could continue to write about why Facebook is making these changes from a socio-economic perspective.
It might be very interesting.
As a marketer, however, I am more interested in the “how”.
How are ads changing?
How does this impact my business specifically?
How will I adapt?
The detailed targeting options that will be removed involve topics that Facebook has categorised as "sensitive" like:
Health
Race
Ethnicity
Sexual orientation
Religion
Political beliefs
So how do we as marketers get ready to adapt?
The Marketing API will change on January 19 this year, but most campaigns can continue targeting the above options until March 17. However, anyone carrying out new ads will have less options and anyone editing their ongoing ads might see a “pause in delivery”.
According to Meta, after March 17, advertisers that choose a remove targeting option will see this message
“Error code 100, sub code 18157520: Cannot Use Invalid Detailed Targeting Options: Some of Your Detailed Targeting Options Have Been Removed: This ad set includes detailed targeting options that are either no longer available or unavailable when excluding people from an audience. You may need to remove items from your ad set or confirm the changes to turn it back on.”
If you see this message, you’ll need to update your targeting option outside of the mentioned interests above.
Although Facebook advertising is changing, we should not be surprised. The digital space has continuously been moving the goal posts. As marketers we should be used to these types of changes by now.
The way I see it, the metaverse will soon be disembarking. Massive change is going to call on us to learn, adapt and be creative in ways never done before.
Luckily, for marketing folk, that type of challenge is more fun than worrying.
This is an amazing opportunity to go back to basics. I guess digital ad copy writing will be very much in demand. Also, first party information gathering will be crucial. So companies will invest in their CRMs. it probably would also be a very good idea to hire people that can read into the analytics of your future campaigns.