Meta Is Updating Detailed Targeting Options And Removing Sensitive Topics Targeting

author image Written by: Rabije Gashi Corluka Categories - Paid Ads, Social Media

Meta will remove some of the ad targeting options related to sensitive topics on January 19.

The goal is to meet people’s growing expectations about how advertisers can reach them, as well as to address comments from civil rights experts and policymakers on the importance of preventing advertisers from abusing the targeting options Meta provides.

On January 19, they will be removing some Detailed Targeting options on topics that people find sensitive, such as targeting options referencing causes, organizations or public figures that relate to health, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, etc. Some of the examples they provided were:

Health causes: ‘Lung cancer awareness’, ‘World Diabetes Day’
Sexual orientation: ‘ LGBT culture’, ‘Same-sex marriage’
Religious practices: ‘Jewish holidays’, ‘Catholic church’
Political beliefs, social issues, organizations and figures

Why Is This Important?

If you use Facebook for advertising, you won’t be able to rely on targeting options that relate to sensitive topics. This means you will have to change your ad strategy when planning new campaigns. However, the existing campaigns you have will be able to run for additional 60 days after the new update. Some edits in the campaign (such as spending limit or name) will be possible to make until March 17, without affecting the targeting. But, if you pause the campaign before March 17, you will be unable to turn it back on without updating the targeting.

Additionally, Meta will remove targeting options that have not been widely used because of their overall redundancy. They didn’t mention anything specific.

Tags - Paid Ads, Social Media, Facebook Ads, Meta

Rabije Gashi Corluka

Other Changes Coming to Facebook

Apple recently released iOS 14 and IDFA, which means all Apple users will have to consent to cross-app tracking. Advertisers will also have to provide two short lines of text to explain this to users.

Facebook has spoken out against the change, arguing that it would hurt publisher revenues.

“We know this may severely impact publishers’ ability to monetize through Audience Network on iOS 14, and, despite our best efforts, may render Audience Network so ineffective on iOS 14 that it may not make sense to offer it on iOS 14 in the future,” said Facebook.

Facebook later made the decision to adopt Apple’s SKAdNetwork API, but stated it would not implement Private Click Measurement (PCM), with the reasoning that it doesn’t capture the complexities of the user journey. Facebook instead decided to create Aggregated Event Measurement (AEM) to measure conversion events on iOS.

Revenue Forecasts For 2021

With the increase in ad prices driving revenue growth, Facebook expects that revenue will either continue to increase or remain stable throughout 2021.

“We expect second quarter 2021 year-over-year total revenue growth to remain stable or modestly accelerate relative to the growth rate in the first quarter of 2021 as we lap slower growth related to the pandemic during the second quarter of 2020,” said Facebook’s CFO Sheryl Sandberg.

“It’s also on us to keep making the case that personalized advertising is good for people and businesses and to better explain how it works so that people realize that personalized ads can be privacy-protected.”

Facebook and Google both have policies against advertisers who try to scam users. However, a watchdog report suggests that these policies need an upgrade.

Britain-based consumer watchdog Which? released an independent report on the tech companies’ efforts to stop scammers. In the report, they reveal that Google had failed to remove 34% of the scam advertisements reported by users. Comparably, Facebook had failed to remove 26% of them.

Both companies flat-out ban scam advertisements, but scammers often use sneaky techniques to overpass the sites’ rules. According to Which?, the sites need to crack down on scammers.

“There is no doubt that tech giants, regulators and the government need to go to greater lengths to prevent scams from flourishing,” said Adam French, consumer rights expert at Which? “Online platforms must be given a legal responsibility to identify, remove and prevent fake and fraudulent content on their sites… and the government needs to act now.”

Another finding demonstrated problem with the process of reporting scam ads.

Following a survey, 15% of web users admitted that they had fallen victim to a scam advertisement and reported it. Among those users, 27% had been scammed on Facebook and 19% had been scammed on Google. Nearly half of the scam victims did not report their incident to these companies.

Why not report? On Facebook, the most common reason for not reporting was that the user doubted that anything would actually happen. On Google, meanwhile, the most common reason was that the user did not know how to report as scammer. This, according to Which?, indicates that Google needs to simplify its reporting procedure.

“Online platforms need to take a far more proactive approach to prevent fraudulent content from reaching potential victims in the first place,” Which? said in the report.

According to BBC, a rep from Facebook said that “fraudulent activity is not allowed on Facebook and we have taken action on a number of pages reported to us by Which.”

Google said that it has removed more than 3.1 billion ads for violating their ad policies, saying: “We have strict policies that govern the kinds of ads that we allow to run on our platform.”