Meta is changing the direction of Facebook advertising for 2022

January 19th – make a note of the date! Meta announced that Facebook ad campaigns will make changes to audience targeting.

In response to pressure from the industry, Facebook parent brand Meta is keeping its previous promise and will reduce targeting settings for advertisers.

This also suggests a broader trend.

On the one hand, a high level of targeting precision supports the creation of highly personalized experiences that enable relevant and valuable user interaction.

At the same time, sensitivity increases when people are identified based on their affiliation with social causes, health conditions or demographic characteristics.

Against this background, Facebook restricts the advertising options in order to no longer allow targeting based on these sensitive parameters.

What’s changing in Facebook ad targeting?

As of January 19, Facebook is removing targeting options in four main categories as well as seldom-used niche segments.

• Health causes (e.g. breast cancer awareness).
• Sexual Orientation (e.g. LGBT).
• Religious Practices and Groups (e.g. Catholic Church).
• Political opinions, social issues, concerns, organizations or personalities (e.g. political party or political candidate).

Metas update on the upcoming changes mentions that campaigns can still reach affected target group targets until the end of March 2022.

In addition, the changes will not fully propagate in the meta-ecosystem.

For ad groups created before January 19th, you can make changes at the campaign level until March 17th, such as: B. budget amounts or campaign names without affecting targeting.

However, changes at the ad group level trigger audience changes.

If an ad group is paused before March 17th, the new targeting changes will also take effect when you reactivate them.

After March 17th, you will no longer be able to edit previous campaigns that use outdated targeting settings.

In order for changes to be made at the campaign, ad group, or ad level, you may need to revise the detailed targeting settings before March 17th.

Will there be a bigger impact for social advertisers?

It will be interesting to see if other social media platforms follow suit and adjust their targeting skills as well. So far, Meta has seen more pressure than other platforms.

Without checking and possibly also reducing their targeting granularity across sensitive criteria, other social platforms run the risk of pulling the same test as Facebook.

You might expect that they too will be de-targeting personal traits in the near future.

Meta has not indicated whether it plans to make further targeting adjustments or whether this will be the only optimization in the foreseeable future.

Still, you can comfort yourself that Meta is responding to the increasing feedback from the voices and hope that it will take note of further developments.

While this comes first in the context of social media, programmatic and search advertising providers should also be careful.

In the past, these vehicles have made extensive use of data that enables a high level of targeting precision and provides granular insights using demographic, socio-economic, and other parameters.

If these actors do not directly address the sensitivity of granular ad targeting and reporting given the above developments, they may be forced to do so (as soon as the impact of setting cookies increases).

From social issues due to profiling to the bigger trend towards privacy concerns, advertising platforms and advertisers alike need to be prepared for sensitive issues.

More resources:

---

Featured image: Jirsak / Shutterstock