Meta announced yesterday that as of January 30, 2023, all existing listings that businesses have published on their Facebook business pages will be deleted, and it will no longer support the ability of businesses to create ads for the sale or rental of vehicles and real estate through a Facebook business page. Ads for the sale or rental of a vehicle and real estate They will still be available in the marketplace, but it will not be possible to publish them through business pages, but only from the personal profile.
As I recall, only two months ago Meta announced the transition from business pages to "public status" in the personal profile, which should increase transparency when it comes to people and businesses that advertise on the platform.
In this way, Facebook actually differentiates between agencies and brokers in the fields of cars and real estate and sales and rentals in the private market. Private individuals will be able to continue to publish ads for the sale of cars or for the rental of apartments, but brokers, property managers and car agents will have to operate from now on in the new channels offered by the platform for those businesses.
Dedicated programs for vehicle and real estate advertising
According to the company's statement, Meta will continue to invest in innovative solutions to meet the needs of the automotive and real estate industries in the future. "Vehicle Inventory Ads" is a catalog solution for automotive businesses that uses Meta's AI to help buyers in the market find their next vehicle Using a dedicated metapixel, car dealerships will be able to upload their entire vehicle catalog, including full technical specifications, and then display the most compelling inventory and features to the right audiences.
In doing so, Facebook apparently hopes to address the vast gaps in the amount of information provided in Marketplace ads, which in many Cases don't even include basic information like price and model. Currently, Facebook Marketplace is one of the least convenient tools for finding a car, so when local solutions like Yad2 manage to provide a better user experience, Meta just has to make a move.
A quick look at the "apartments and houses for rent" categories shows the dismal state of Facebook Marketplace, which is unable to even sort ads into the most basic categories.
Properties for rent and sale, vehicles, shops and warehouses are all listed under the same category, some in foreign languages and many without a price.
A collection of unrelated ads without information and without price. (Photo: screenshot, Facebook Marketplace)
To move forward in real estate as well, Facebook is now launching the "Top Vendors Initiative," a new effort to help agents, brokers and property management companies "that form the core of the local property industry," according to Meta, reach their audiences and stand out through Facebook and Instagram.
So how do we find an apartment or a car on Facebook in 2023?
As mentioned, listings of private users will continue to appear in the same Facebook Marketplace format, except that car agents and real estate agents will not be allowed to advertise on it.
This may work in the US, but in Israel as in Israel, you can be sure that we will continue to see ads from agents who will simply manipulate the system to advertise from their private profile instead of from the business page, after all, despite all its flaws, advertising in the marketplace is much more profitable because it allows the ad to be distributed in many groups easily and for free.
Finally, if Meta's new plans for car and real estate advertisers live up to expectations, then Facebook will become very similar to Lid2, except that, at least in Israel, it will probably deal mainly with new properties and cars.
If you ask me, that's a bit pretentious of her.
We've already seen quite a few Meta projects fall apart as opposed to starting up due to a lack of fit for the local market.
It should be remembered that the real estate market in the USA is very different from that of the country and real estate agents do not really "constitute the core of the property industry" as the company describes.
What does this mean for the Israeli consumer?
In the US, it is almost impossible to sell, rent or buy an apartment or a car privately, and everything is done by agents. In Israel, on the other hand, these two markets are much more fragmented. While the buying and selling of houses and apartments, new or not, is usually done through intermediaries , in the rental market, which is the main market in Israel, apartment owners use brokerage services and collect the brokerage fees from the renters against the law, simply because they can. Car agents impersonate private sellers in order to manipulate innocent customers and deceive them. Without generalizing, these are common phenomena that cannot be ignored. Meta's new features may exacerbate the situation and give exclusivity to realtors instead of empowering the user to find the apartment he is looking for on his own.
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