Three things to know about Facebook’s Audience Targeting Update
Get the lowdown in our two-minute video, or read the transcript below.
What’s happening?
Late last year, Meta, formerly known as Facebook, announced that they’re removing a handful of interest-based targeting segments from their ad platform that they deem sensitive. Some examples of what these sensitive categories are include race, ethnicity, health, sexual orientation, political affiliation, as well as religion (read more about the categories on Meta’s website).
Why is this happening?
This update is likely a direct result of events such as the release of the Facebook Papers in October, which outlined all of the real-world harm that stems from the spread of misinformation across the platform over the last couple years. It’s really just an effort from Facebook and Meta to course correct all of the spread of misinformation, their reputation, and to protect the community they’ve built.
How will this impact advertisers?
So how can we adapt? Well, the good news is that while these sensitive categories are being removed, there’s still an abundance of options for us from a targeting perspective across the platform. Things like remarketing, lookalike targeting, geo targeting, and demo targeting—none of that is going away. So we can still engage creative targeting strategies in order to reach our desired audiences.
If you are using any of the interest-based targeting from these sensitive categories it’s really important that you go into your platform immediately, look at your campaigns, and audit them. You want to understand which segments are going away and how that will impact your overall campaign.
One important call out: If you’re in the healthcare space it’s going to be really important to also consider HIPAA, and make sure that any changes to targeting or leveraging of new strategies, such as lookalike or retargeting, are following all HIPAA guidelines.
KSM’s team of Social Media experts continue to stay on top of and track all the changes happening over at Meta, which definitely keeps us busy given the volume. We’d love to talk more about it, so don’t hesitate to reach out if you have questions about this update or any in the future.