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Facebook has recently been called Meta
Photo: DADO RUVIC / REUTERS
From next year onwards, Facebook, which is now called Meta, is cutting back the possibility for advertisers to display ads to specific groups of people. As part of the so-called »detailed targeting«, numerous options relating to issues »that people can perceive as sensitive« are to be dropped from January 19, according to the company's announcement. The move should include options that are related to organizations or public figures, or issues such as health, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, and political attitudes.
Meta mentions “World Diabetes Day”, “Chemotherapy”, “Same-sex marriage”, “LGBT culture”, “Catholic Church” and “Jewish holidays” as specific examples of the keywords that have been dropped. According to the company, there are "thousands" of such categories. The plans relate to Facebook's social network, but also to Instagram and its Messenger.
In its announcement, Meta speaks of a "difficult decision." They continue to be convinced that the best "advertising experiences" are personalized.
It is also mentioned that some advertising partners are skeptical of the move because it entails disadvantages for them.
At the same time, so emphasizes Meta, they wanted to respond to the feedback from civil rights experts, political decision-makers and other stakeholders, "who point out how important it is to prevent advertisers from misusing the targeting options we have made available."
In the past, Facebook had often been criticized for its targeting options, for example in the context of catchphrases such as "Jew haters".
Facebook had already removed around 5,000 targeting options in 2018 in order to prevent their misuse.
Not only abuse is made more difficult
How the current step will affect day-to-day advertising will only be assessed in the coming year.
However, it seems foreseeable that the change will not only make it more difficult to abuse the system, but will also deprive civil rights activists or non-profit organizations, for example, of directing unproblematic advertising to their target groups.
However, the announcement does not mean an end to advertising targeting in the meta-universe.
According to the New York Times, there are tens of thousands of other categories that advertisers can use to reach target groups with similar ease.
Meta itself indicates in its announcement on the topic that it offers its customers other ways to get their ads to the desired target group anyway, such as creating a so-called lookalike audience.
Metas advertising system searches for new target groups with similar characteristics on the basis of, among other things, demographic information, interests and behaviors of an initial target group.
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