Meta (previously Facebook) has announced some significant changes to audience targeting within Facebook Ads Manager. For those who may be new to Facebook Ads Manager, it’s the tool that marketers use to build and promote brands within Facebook and Instagram.
Source https://www.searchenginejournal.com/meta-facebook-ads-targeting/430239/
Beginning January 19th, marketers will no longer be able to enable certain targeting options across 4 categories. Those will include Health Causes, Sexual Orientation, Religious Practices & Groups, and Political Beliefs.
- Health Causes – this would include breast cancer awareness and other forms of the alike
- Sexual Orientation – this would include groups such as LGBTQ+
- Religious Practices – would include Catholic Church and other denominations
- Political Beliefs – this ranges from social issues, causes, organizations, and figures (for example, political candidates)
There are some caveats this though, worth noting, through the below scenarios:
- New Campaigns: If you launch new campaigns after January 19th, these categories will not be available to you.
- Existing Campaigns: For campaigns that a marketer already has live prior to January 19th of 2022, it will be possible to make campaign-level edits such as adjusting budgets and names of campaigns, without impacting those campaigns grandfathered in, until March 17th. Adset level changes though will trigger a change in targeting enablement.
You might ask yourself as a marketer or as a brand, what might I do about this? Here are some tips:
- Marry Buy Method + Ad Messaging: You’ll likely want to start testing click and acquisition-based buy methods that help refine ‘interested’ hand-raisers, vs. explicitly targeting them using previously available targeting options. In addition to that, you’ll want to multivariate test messages and measure for the best click and conversion rates as well.
- Over index to how you’re capturing demand, and get creative! Said another way, start to test with forms on the platform and on your own website or owned experience. Through forms, quizzes, and pop-ups you’re going to want to capture as much information as you can. The goal is to maximize the amount of emails/phone numbers you acquire. After all, it can be more valuable and personalized if you’re able to talk to customers over email and SMS/MMS vs. remarketing to them time and again through paid advertising.
- Segment your database by creating buckets of high to low-value audiences. Then plug that back into the Facebook ads manager marketing system to refine, what’s often called, first-party data or audiences. This can also be called database marketing. What’s also a benefit of doing this, is that you can select to extend the reach of your first-party audience through what’s called Lookalikes.
We empathize with brands, organizations, agencies, and marketers – change is hard and we hope this information helps.
However, if this is confusing or new to you, please feel free to schedule a consultation with our experts. We’re here to help brands and advertisers navigate this change, and perform their marketing goals.
Contact us here: https://www.intuitiolabs.com/contact-us/
