• by Colin Kirkland , January 12, 2024

Starting January 15, Meta will begin removing or consolidating some detailed targeting options that it says are either not widely used, are redundant with others, are too granular, have legal or regulatory complications, or “relate to topics people may perceive as sensitive,” such as health, race or ethnicity.

Meta will let marketers know if any of their campaigns running on Facebook or Instagram are affected by the changes via a warning banner on the Meta Ads Manager campaigns page. After updating one's targeting selections, these ad sets will still continue to run unaffected through March 18, but may be paused after that date.

The tech giant has not yet provided which targeting categories will be removed, but the company's announcement marks a clear move away from a more granular ad targeting approach, which has been widely used in discriminatory ways.

For years, Meta's ad-targeting options have been criticized for discrimination, forcing the company to continually change or limit options to advertisers.

In 2018, the company erased 5,000 ad targeting options from its ad platform in lieu of the scandal involving Cambridge Analytica, which attempted to sway voter opinions in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election by hyper-targeting citizens with divisive political content.

The next year, Meta (then called Facebook) was also found guilty of selling pre-populated lists to advertisers who were able to place housing, employment and credit ads that excluded African Americas, Hispanics, Asian Americans, people of certain ages, national origins, family status and disability.

Meta is now suggesting that marketers whose campaigns are affected by these new changes rely on the company’s delivery system by utilizing systematic display options, including broad targeting and Advantage+ which the company argues may actually help marketers target users they’ve overlooked.

Meta says it will offer marketers more alternative targeting recommendations as the changes take effect.