What Facebook’s New Ad Targeting Restrictions Mean For You

By Lindsay Valenty -

Facebook has recently introduced new targeting restrictions that impact how businesses are able to define audiences for social media advertising campaigns in the Property Development and Senior Living markets.

In an effort to prevent potential housing discrimination, Facebook has put in place new “Special Ad Categories,” which restrict the audience attributes that advertisers are able to utilize when promoting a housing/leasing opportunity. Some of these restrictions include:

• No age/gender targeting

• Limited behavioral targeting

• Limited re-targeting

• Geo-targeting no smaller than 15 mi. radius

• Lookalike audiences replaced with modified “Special Ad Audiences”

• You can find the full list of these restrictions on Facebook’s website

What does that mean for you?

The limitations Facebook is placing on the use of their data places an even greater emphasis on brands accumulating their own “first-party data.” This includes contact information for current and past customers, newsletter subscribers, event attendees and website visitors collected via the Facebook tracking pixel. These are all valuable methods of targeting that can be used to create custom audiences that are independent of the data that Facebook makes available to advertisers.