Facebook is Removing Detailed Targeting — What Does That Mean?
By Bob Hutchins, Vice President of Digital
According to Facebook- "Starting January 19, 2022, we will remove Detailed Targeting options that relate to topics people may perceive as sensitive, such as options referencing causes, organizations, or public figures that relate to health, race or ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, or sexual orientation."
So what does this mean for businesses that market on Facebook? It means that you won't be able to target your ads based on specific health-related causes, political beliefs, religious groups, and beliefs, or sexual orientation. This will affect thousands of qualifiers. So if you are targeting -"likely engagement with US political content (conservative)", you will no longer have access to this.
So that's the bad news. The good news is that this will not affect Custom Audiences that have been built with your email lists or engagement with pages. This also holds true for lookalike audiences. Additionally, some of the similar targeting options that appeal to more generic interests will remain available.
It seems the reason for this change is because, under the EU’s consumer data protection laws (GDPR), Facebook must gain consent from users in order to target them this way. Facebook has been battling this law since its inception in 2018. It appears that Facebook is conceding due in part to the global shift toward more privacy control and their own internal issues.
While there are still many ways available to target on Facebook, this underscores the importance of prioritizing the collection of first-party data by building your lists and segmenting them. Collecting data like demographics, purchase history, website activity, and sales interactions is what all businesses and organizations should be shifting to the "front of the line" on their priority list. You can no longer depend on platforms like Facebook to freely give you that information.
Facebook has said that existing ad sets with these targeting options will continue to run until Mar 17, 2022. Facebook also says that it will provide further targeting recommendations within Ads Manager where possible.