Advertising on Facebook: What do the new rules mean for you?

From the end of January, Meta, Facebook's parent company, is introducing new rules around the various advertising objectives. Due to ongoing criticism of its advertising and privacy policy, Meta felt compelled to make a drastic change for businesses advertising on its platforms. But what exactly are these changes, and how should you deal with them as a business? In this blog we explain all the changes and give you a few tips to make sure you still reach the right audience with your ads.

What has changed in the advertising policy?

Ever since 2007, businesses have been able to reach people through Facebook ads. Audiences could be defined based on certain interests and preferences. From January 2022, however, a major change applies here. Late last year, parent company Meta announced it would prohibit businesses from targeting sensitive audiences based on race, religion, sexual orientation and political preference.

In total, thousands of ad categories are being removed. A few examples are: 'same-sex marriage', 'Catholic Church' and 'World Diabetes Day'. Unlike before, as a business you can therefore no longer advertise specifically to people within those groups.

Introduction of special ad categories 

On top of that, special ad categories are also being introduced. Each category comes with different rules your campaign must comply with. In most cases, certain restrictions apply to the targeting options you can set. These are the ad categories in question:

Credit: this covers ads that promote a credit opportunity or link directly to one. Examples include credit card offers, car loans or mortgages. Brand ads for credit cards also fall within this category.

Employment: this category covers all ads relating to the promotion of vacancies, internships and professional certifications.

Housing: these are all ads that promote a housing opportunity or related service. This includes ads for the sale or rental of houses or flats, mortgages, home and mortgage insurance, home repair and home equity or valuation services.

Within this category there is an exception for ads that aim to inform people about their rights and responsibilities under housing law.

Social issues, elections or politics: this category covers ads made by, on behalf of, or for a political candidate, figure or party regarding the outcome of a political election. This category also applies to ads related to an election, referendum or ballot initiative, or ads that encourage people to vote.

Ads relating to social issues in a location where the ad is being run also fall within this category. A social issue is here defined as a sensitive topic that is heavily debated, that could influence an election result, that could lead to new legislative proposals, or that relates to existing legislation.

Does your ad fall within one of these categories? Then you must select the relevant ad category when creating an ad campaign. If you fail to do so, your ads will in almost all cases be rejected. The special ad categories do come with certain restrictions on audience selection.

What restrictions do the ad categories bring with them?

Firstly, you can no longer advertise based on age, gender or postcode. In most categories the age range is fixed at 18-65+ and no distinction can be made by gender. Your ads are therefore shown to both men and women by default.

In terms of location too, it is no longer possible to advertise very specifically within these categories. Normally you can choose to show your ad within a 1 kilometre radius of a specific location. Within the special categories, a minimum of 15 kilometres now applies.

It is also no longer possible within the special ad categories to target based on specific demographics or behaviour. For example, you can no longer advertise based on education level or field of work. It is also no longer possible to exclude certain people from your ads based on this data.

Finally, for ads in the 'Social issues, elections or politics' category, you must verify your identity before you can run ads on this topic.

What is still possible?

So the new advertising policy brings plenty of restrictions. How do you make sure your ads still reach the right audience?

Make sure your ads are relevant to your audience 

Making sure the content and ads you put out align with your audience is one of the most important things there is. To do this, it's important to first map out your audience(s) in as much detail as possible. You can do this by creating buyer personas. While creating these, you map out, among other things, the needs and interests of your audience.

To make your ads and content relevant to your audience, the next step is to respond to these needs and interests. Relevant content that aligns with the audience forms the basis of every ad campaign.

Audiences based on activity and engagement 

Despite the many restrictions within the new advertising policy, particularly for the special ad categories, it is still possible to show your ads to your desired audience. Custom audiences and lookalike audiences, for instance, remain available. This is because all the data for these is generated from within Facebook itself.

With these custom audiences you can, for example, reach people who:

• Have ever watched one or more of your videos
• Have ever interacted with your page
• Have ever interacted with a previous ad of yours

Within these criteria it is even possible to target people who, for example, clicked one specific call to action button on the landing page.

A/B testing is more important than ever 

Running A/B tests on your ads can help ensure you ultimately reach the right audience with your ads. There are, in principle, two ways to approach this.

Firstly, you can choose to create multiple ads, each with a few small changes, and distribute these to the same audience. This way you eventually find out which ad performs best with your audience.

You can also choose to approach it the other way round. By distributing one and the same ad across different audience specifications that each differ slightly from one another. This way you find out which audience you can best advertise to. You can then take this into account for a future campaign.

What to do if Facebook rejects your ads?

Even if you follow the tips above and comply properly with the new advertising policy, it is still possible that Facebook rejects your ads. Facebook always notifies you of this by email. In your ad account you can then check the reason given for the ad being rejected.

Do you disagree with the reason for rejection? Then you can request a new review. Is it clear why your ad was rejected? Then you can edit the ad and republish it, which will automatically trigger a new review.

In most cases such a review takes place within a few hours. On a second rejection, your ad is permanently rejected. You can then no longer request a new review for that specific ad, so you will need to create the ad again from scratch.

In short, despite the significant new restrictions Meta is imposing on advertisers, there are still plenty of ways to make sure your ads reach the audience they were intended for.

Need help reaching the right audience within your Facebook campaigns? We're happy to help! Feel free to get in touch with us.