Incredible news for the Facebook advertisers. Today, the platform announced that it will no longer allow ad audiences to be targeted on the basis of “sensitive” elements, such as health, sexual orientation, religion or political ideology. Categories such as “lung cancer awareness” or “LGBT culture” can no longer be used to define an ad’s audience. So let’s go and discover all the news of Facebook Ads.
Facebook Ads: eliminate the “sensitive” categories for the target audience
For those who have never had anything to do with Facebook Ads, here is a brief summary of how advertising on the platform works. The platform allows advertisers to define their target audience based on the information provided by users in their profile, such as age, gender and location. As well as on the basis of categories of interest, which are often defined by the platform on the basis of the user’s actions. If, for example, you often interact with content that relates to homosexuality or gender difference, Facebook is likely to assign you the category “LGBT rights”.
In this case, the platform recognizes this categorization as “sensitive”. Therefore, out of respect for its users, it has decided to eliminate the possibility for advertisers to define the audience based on these details. Starting from 19 January 2022in fact, these categories can no longer be used in targeting the Facebook Ads audience. “The decision to remove these detailed targeting options was not an easy one and we know this change could negatively impact some companies and organizations.” So the company commented in a post published on its blog.
But the choice of Meta in this sense was absolutely necessary. After the rebrand, the company found itself under the strict control of the Senate, and certainly could not move otherwise. “We want to better meet people’s evolving expectations about how advertisers can reach them on our platform and respond to feedback from civil rights experts, policy makers and other stakeholders on the importance of preventing advertisers from abusing the targeting options we put available”. In short, once again Facebook tries to defend its users. But will he really make it?