Health & Wellness, Financial Services and Politics:
Meta's new 'Sensitive Categories' list comes with increasingly punishing restrictions...
Meta has begun rolling out new category tagging inside business accounts
Meta has begun rolling out new category tagging inside business accounts. The tag is applied automatically by Meta according to the data they find on your website and/or app. While this can be appealed, it’s likely to stay unless there’s a very clear mis-application.
The categories so far are Health & Wellness, Financial Services and Politics.
While financial services and politics have long since had data restrictions, the addition of Health & Wellness, and the breadth that category covers, is causing more than a few raised eyebrows.
How will this affect your campaigns?
As yet, the full impact of the new application is still under wraps. Various leaks from inside Meta suggest that accounts tagged in these sensitive categories will be set to Core Setup.
This is a restricted data setting inside Meta Events Manager that was previously optional but may become compulsory for businesses in these categories.
The impact of Core Setup is listed on Meta’s site. Key points are as follows:
Customer Parameters:
- Removal of data obtained from any custom parameters after the domain URL. Eg. www.yoursite.com/optin-page will relay data only from www.yoursite.com
- This prevents custom audiences from being created from specific URLs, or events being sent via parameters added to the URL to identify the action.
Custom Audiences:
- Any audiences created by device rules or page visits beyond the root domain (www.yoursite.com) will not be created or updated.
- This will affect retargeting audiences set up via URL parameters.
Automatic Advanced Matching:
- This feature may become unavailable. It can be reinstated via manual development. The cost of which is as yet unknown.
Catalogue updates via Pixel:
- New items added to your store may not automatically update via the pixel and will have to be added manually instead.
Custom Events:
- Both online and offline custom events will be reviewed for compliance with Meta Business Tool Terms and any that are not compliant will be unavailable for confirmation at the point of rollout.
The Bigger Issue:
In addition to the Core Setup being applied, there are substantial rumours that the lower-funnel events will also be restricted, as will any higher-funnel events that are used to mimic lower-funnel events and circumvent this restriction.
This is by far the most concerning aspect of this data restriction.
lower-funnel events may include those which are commonly associated with conversions, such as:
- Lead
- Complete Registration
- Add to Cart
- Purchase
Higher-funnel events typically refer to the events which happen on Meta’s platform, such as:
- Video View
- Engagement
What does it mean for you?
As yet, there is little information available and a whole lot of speculation, claims of inside knowledge and varied information relayed by Meta’s reps. Officially, this rollout has not yet been confirmed, even though we’re seeing the tagging live inside accounts.
The most concerning aspect of this data loss is the potential that we may lose the ability to set objectives for lower funnel events (likely to include: ‘Purchase’, ‘Add to Cart’, and potentially even ‘Lead’).
The impact of this new rollout will undoubtedly cause massive disruption to campaigns that rely on the lower-funnel objectives as data will not be readily available.
How to check if your account has been categorized:
Note: this is still rolling out. If your account does not show a category today, but you know you are operating in one of the three listed 'sensitive categories' please keep checking periodically.
Meta will usually communicate via email or inside Events Manager. You can manually check by going to Events Manager where you’ll see an alert under Overview to review your data source categories.
If you do not see the alert but want to be sure, you can go to ‘Data sources’ in the side menu, then ‘Settings’ in the menu above the graph. From there, scroll down to Manage data source categories
From there you can review the category assigned to your account. If you believe it to be incorrect, you can submit an appeal. The timeline is said to be 3-7 days with no further appeals to be sent for 30 days after a decision has been made. This is as yet untested by us...
Once you see your category, you can go back to the Settings screen to check your events:
You’ll see any Events which need attention (submitting for review), and any that have been Confirmed already, and any that have been blocked, as was the case for this account which was categorized as Health & wellness provider.
What are we doing about this?
As yet, the full impact of what will happen is unknown. Indeed, Meta has yet to clarify exactly what this may mean for data relayed via Standard Events that do not rely on custom parameters. However, if the lower funnel events are restricted it will have a significant impact on your advertising results.
We are in contact daily with our dedicated rep at Meta who is updating us as this rollout happens. We’re also in communication with high-level partners who will have access to greater information and strategies.
For now, ensure that your account is using only standard events, has a strong brand building presence, alongside your lead generation and purchase campaigns, and is using unrestricted optimizations such as video views to grow, educate and nurture your audiences.
As this develops, you will want to ensure that your account is managed strategically to reduce the impact as much as possible.
Of course, it is likely that there will be a period of increased instability as advertisers throughout these restricted categories adapt to the new structure, learn what the reduced data collection impact is to each account.
Our clients are benefitting from our work with both Meta and other advertisers to adapt our core advertising strategies in order to reduce any potential negative impact on their accounts and put them in a position of strength for the future.
If you would like to learn more about this, please see how you can benefit below.
What you should be doing (anyway, but even more important in light of this!):
As ever, when there are big changes to advertising and data collection we see businesses built on strong offers with clear communication of their message, value and impact, thrive, while other less professional businesses fall away.
Remember; Advertising is Strategic Amplification of your Message.
As we lose some of the data that was previously used to refine that amplification, we need to make sure that the messaging is even clearer, tighter and more valuable than ever to our target audience.
By focusing your energy and effort on clear messaging, creating and nurturing the connection between your audience and your business, and continuing to show up on video, in particular, you will help us to reduce the impact on your business.
Account Review & Recommendations for Our Strategy to Reduce the Impact of Data Restrictions.
Our signature campaign strategy, The Ads Ecosystem supports education, nurture and conversion paths without relying solely on lower-funnel events.
This means that your message is amplified to more of your target audience, and that they arrive at you opt in page educated in what it is that you do and how they will achieve the result through you.
The Ads Ecosystem serves to not only educate, but nurture your audience. It helps to expose and overcome potential objections, offer social proof and, most importantly, exposes your target audience to your style of coaching, ensuring that more of those who join your list, your webinar, or your challenge and already sold on you as their coach.
And what this means is that when you're ready to make an offer, they're ready to invest.
With the loss of these key lower-funnel events, we’re doubling down on our Ads Ecosystem structure to give our client’s audiences the confidence they need.
When you book your account review and audit call with us, we will review your account and give you the strategy we’re using with our agency clients to reduce the impact of lost data from these restrictions.
In just one call, you’ll gain a clear overview of the current performance of your account, and the likely areas of impact on your ads data.
What’s more, we’ll walk you through the core strategy that we’ve been using with clients to reduce the impact of data loss through the major changes of iOS14, Google’s removal of 3rd party pixel data and Apple Browser’s ads blockers.
While we don’t know exactly what these latest changes from Meta will bring, we do know that it only affects the data sourced externally to Meta’s platform. Something that our Ads Ecosystem is already immune to.
Book your Audit & Strategy call today to see how we’re maximizing the retention, engagement and nurturing of our client’s audiences to the conversion, so you can benefit, too.