Meta, Facebook’s new parent company, announced this week that they’re changing some of the advertising practices of Facebook. Meta has announced the removal of Facebook Ads audience targeting options across certain categories, beginning January 2022.
According to the Facebook for Business help centre, detailed targeting allows organizations to “refine” the audience of users that Facebook shows their ads to, based on demographics, interests, and behaviours. Topics that Facebook has classified as sensitive will be removed from the detailed targeting options. These include:
- Health
- Race
- Ethnicity
- Sexual orientation
- Religion
- Political beliefs
This decision was made in response to concerns expressed by experts who worry that this type of ad targeting may harm people in underrepresented groups. The company has been facing increasing scrutiny in recent years regarding its misuse of user data.
Facebook advertising is changing, but we’re not surprised. We’re here to ride Facebook’s wave in the direction that it takes us, which appears to be heading towards the metaverse very soon. Using their suggestions to help reach these audiences, we can update our ad sets and campaigns to adapt.
