Facebook’s interest targeting changes have caused upheaval for many small businesses. Some interests started being removed in January 2022, followed by an inability to run active campaigns with these removed targeting options from March 17, 2022. The removed interests related to topics people may perceive as sensitive, such as:
- Health conditions.
- Religious and spiritual practices.
- LGBTQI+ and same-sex marriage interests.
- Political beliefs
Facebook is also moving towards wanting advertisers to use more broad targeting options so they rely on Facebook’s delivery system. If you haven’t advertised your business for a while, you may find your ad sets are unusable, unless you remove certain interests from your targeting.
We explore some of the implications for Facebook advertisers, and look at what you can do instead of using these interests.
How the Removals Have Impacted Current Ad Sets
If you created any ad sets prior to January 19 that used any of the interest targeting options, they ran until March 17, after which, the ad stopped running with a warning on any impacted targeting options you’ve used.
- If you included one of these prohibited topics in your targeting, the ad manager automatically removes it and updates the delivery accordingly and the platform may recommend alternatives for you to reach your target audience.
- If you excluded any of these topics, the ads manager paused the affected ad sets so you would need to update and republish these manually to meet the new requirements.
Editing active campaigns can be tricky, especially if you need to modify an ad set that uses one of the outdated targeting options. But if you want to make any ad-set level edits, Ads Manager requires you to update your detailed targeting so you comply with the latest guidelines prior to publishing.
What Alternative Targeting Options Can You Try?
If you have found that the changes have compromised your business’s ability to reach your target audiences, there are many other ways to connect with your ideal customers on Facebook. Here are a couple of targeting options that you could use in your ad sets.
Detailed Targeting Expansion
If you need to remove some of the business’s preferred interest-based targeting options, you may find that your updated audiences are smaller than you would like. But this is where detailed targeting expansion can help. When you switch this option on, you are allowing Facebook to deliver your ads to people outside of your targeting parameters.
Broad Targeting
If you are planning a brand awareness campaign, you can use broad targeting to build a bigger audience and avoid any potential issues with interest-based targeting. To implement this, you only use demographic data, with one of the four location targeting options:
- People living in or recently in the location
- People living in the location
- People recently in the location
- People travelling in the location
There are many other approaches that you can try as well, including:
- Engagement Based Custom Audiences
- Shopping Based Custom Audiences
- Ad-Based Custom Audiences
- Customer List Based Custom Audiences
- Lookalike Audiences
- Dynamic Formats and Creative
Whether you are spending a lot on your Facebook marketing budget or not, it’s important to keep up with the changes. The interest targeting change has already hit many businesses, so you should be aware before you dive into a new campaign or are making changes to your current one.
If you attempt these tips and still find your ad campaigns fall short, get in touch to arrange a free strategy call. We’re here to help!