Get ready for some shifts, folks! Meta's shaking things up in 2025 with big changes for advertisers in areas like health, finance, and politics. They're calling it a focus on 'sensitive' categories, but we're just calling it a new social media advertising chapter.
The 2025 Advertising Shake-Up
After some harsh criticism over the past year, Meta is on a quest to achieve better security and limit the potential discrimination certain ad targeting can cause. Although these changes seem to have a dark cloud surrounding them, there are some new features being rolled out that could help offset the decreased metrics your ads could see from new ad categories, tracking updates, and targeting exclusions.
Say Adios to Detailed Targeting
Let’s start with the not-so-great news. Meta will be removing the ability to use detailed targeting exclusions. This started rolling out in July 2024, but Meta has agreed that no ads will be affected until January 2025. Any ads that may use forbidden exclusions will see a red alert and won't be able to run until the audience is adjusted. For example, if a fashion brand's target audience was female buyers, they used to be able to exclude male users. Based on this new change, this will not be allowed anymore. Age, gender, ZIP code or postal code, exclusion targeting, lookalike audiences, saved audiences and some interests will be limited or unavailable with this new change.
Purge of Customer Lists
Starting March 2025, there will be restrictions on customer list custom audiences for housing, employment, and financial products and services (including credit) campaigns. This change was first announced in October 2024 and is designed to help advertisers follow Meta’s terms and advertising standards.
In the beginning of March, new and edited campaigns/ad sets must use customer list custom audiences that follow Meta’s new requirements or advertisers may not be able to publish their ads. Existing campaigns and ad sets will have until late March to update customer list custom audiences before their ads are paused.
But wait there’s more! Using shared customer list custom audiences from different business portfolios will not be permitted for these three categories. Additionally, Meta has identified a list of companies that provide consumer reports. These companies will no longer be able to use any customer lists, even their own, to advertise housing, jobs, or financial products in their ads. This also means other businesses won't be able to use customer lists shared by these companies for these types of ads.
We bet you are wondering what needs to be done about this.
Certification
If you're an advertiser in the US and you're using customer lists to advertise housing, jobs, or financial products, you'll need to certify that your customer lists don't use any information that Facebook doesn't allow. This includes things like sensitive consumer information. If you add more customer lists to an ad set later, you'll need to certify again. You'll see this certification option in Ads Manager starting in March 2025.
Housekeeping
If you have multiple ad accounts within your business that share customer lists, make sure everyone who manages those ads uses email addresses from the same company domain. For example, if some people use @yourcompany.com and others use @yourcompany.net, you might not be able to use those shared customer lists for ads related to housing, jobs, or financial products.
Special Ad Categories for Our Financial Friends
In October 2024, Meta rolled out a new special ad category encompassing additional financial products and services. The new category, Financial Products and Services, will replace the old “Credit” ad category. By selecting this new category, advertisers can access a more limited set of audience selection tools to help prevent discrimination.
Beginning in early 2025, the use of the Financial Products and Services ad category will be required for all advertisers looking to promote any type of financial product. Ads that do not follow this rule will be rejected and unpublished until the correct category is selected.
Why Are These Changes Coming?
Basically, Meta is trying to clean things up a bit. They're worried about new privacy rules, misleading advertising, evolving regulations, and maintaining a positive user experience. They want to make sure everyone feels safe and comfortable on the platform, and that advertisers are playing fair.
Not All Changes Are Bad
At this point, you may be wondering if any positive changes are coming from Meta in 2025. The good news is that as Meta adjusts its advertising policies for regulatory reasons, they are also working on enhancing its advertising tools to help create better ad performance. Below are a couple examples of improvements Meta is working on making.
-
New Brand Suitability Controls
Meta is testing a new control that allows businesses to turn off comments on their Facebook and Instagram ads. These controls are currently available to a limited number of businesses as Meta tests and adjusts this new functionality. Businesses will soon also have the ability to control which profiles their ads appear on for Facebook and Instagram. All you will need to do is upload a list of public profiles you don’t want your ads to appear on and viola, you’re all done.
In response to business feedback, Meta is also working with Meta Business Partners to give businesses more control over where ads appear in Feed and Reels, as well through third party content block lists. These decisions will happen directly between businesses and their chosen Meta Business Partner.
-
Enhanced Video Performance with GenAI
According to Meta, 60% of time spent on Facebook and Instagram is now spent viewing videos. Because of this, Meta is introducing new video generative AI ad creative tools to help businesses achieve higher ad performance. Advertisers will now be able to seamlessly adjust video assets by generating unseen pixels in each video frame. This creates a more immersive and native video experience.
One of the more exciting features Meta is introducing is the ability to generate video creative from a static image. This is designed to help businesses overcome limited in-house creative resources and create a longer shelf life for creative. On average, ad campaigns using Meta’s generative AI ad features resulted in an 11% higher click-through-rate and a 7.6% higher conversion rate compared to those who didn’t use generative AI.
These new features can be found in Ads Manager Advantage+ Creative, and will be widely available in early 2025.
Ready for the Meta-Morphosis?
If your head is left reeling after all these changes and updates, ZAG Interactive is here to help. Most of the updates mentioned above will begin to roll out completely in early 2025, so make sure your social ad strategy is prepared, or better yet, let us take hold of the reigns and sit back as we navigate the ever-changing world of Meta for you.
At ZAG, we're your one-stop shop for social media success. Our strategies are tailored to your unique goals and budgets, ensuring maximum impact. Additionally, our expert designers craft unique social templates that elevate your brand, while our analytics team provides crystal-clear insights into user engagement and conversions, helping you optimize campaigns for measurable results. Contact us today to start a social media plan for 2025.