Whilst Meta is under the microscope from a record GDPR fine based on US / EU data transfer, there have been some fairly significant updates to its ads platform over the course of the past few weeks, of which have quite massive implications, specifically for advertisers running in Europe.

Location TargetinG CONSOLIDATION

The first change which is slowly rolling out to all ad accounts has to do with geo targeting within Ads Manager. Historically Meta gave advertisers the ability to choose from several options for geo targeting:

• Living in Location

• Recently in Location

• Traveling in Location

• Living or Recently in Location

However after some testing, Meta have made the decision to consolidate this geo targeting into a single one sized fits all approach, as seen on other platforms by default.

Their official stance was the following:

As part of our ongoing efforts to deliver more value to businesses and simplify and streamline our targeting options, we occasionally run tests that we believe will both drive advertiser performance and help inform future enhancements of our products. To that end, we wanted to let you know that at least one of your ad accounts will be included in a test of Location Targeting; a product in our suite of broad targeting tools that we hope may help you drive better performance against your optimisation objectives.

How the test will work

Starting on March 8, 2023, new or duplicated campaigns will no longer see the four Audience Location Status options and instead will only see 'People living in or recently in this location' in the Location Targeting section. We expect this to both simplify the experience of using Location Targeting, while also driving better performance. The test will run until April 19, 2023.

This is a move that can be read in different ways, whether that is to do with user privacy concerns or general accuracy of the location targeting in the first place (looking at 3rd party validations for impressions & clicks). It is not a shock though, given Google made a very similar move on Google Ads a few years back within the Search space.

There will of course be some implications to verticals like food delivery & travel that may have leveraged these additional signals historically for more accurate targeting. As well as a more legal standpoint for verticals like finanical services & gambling that cannot deliver ads to all parts of a country.

RECOMMENDATION: Target your core country / location as normal, but double down with exclusions of countries that may cause inaccurate delivery due to being a neighbouring country or potential source of click fraud. This technique works well in Google Ads & I expect it to work well for Meta too

AEM 8 EVENTS RULE REMOVED

Another large change mentioned by Meta is to do with the concept of AEM (Aggregated Events Measurement) that was introduced with iOS14.5 changes that rolled out in 2021. The latest updates by Meta announced both internally and with UI prompts are the following:

• For web based conversion campaigns, you can now optimise to more than 8 events

• The need to verify domains in order to prioritise events is no longer required

• There is no need to assign your ads to a domain when creating

• The AEM section in Events Manager will gradually disappear

• Value Based optimisation via the Purchase event no longer requires 4 out of the 8 events to work

This sounds and is quite a massive change, especially for advertisers who have been restricted by the 8 events rules based on their business models, with the consolidated pixel / CAPI approach implemented to make do here.

However what isn’t particularly called out in the external comms is that AEM will continue to exist in the background, given there is still a need for Meta to align to Apple’s ATT framework in particular. So whilst there is a lot less strictness here, its important to not completely go back to pre-iOS14.5 ways of working.

From my POV, whilst AEM seemed like a very strict move by Meta when it first was created & no other platform has really attempted to do anything similar, I still believe it is a very smart move by Meta because it attempted to deal with not only the iOS14.5 changes (app specific) with ATT but also the PCM (Private Click Measurement) framework on the web side of things. The latter is not really talked about & a lot of platforms do nothing in this space, but it shows how far ahead Meta can be when it comes to innovation.

This is also a welcome change for campaigns that may drive traffic to 3rd party websites, where ownership was impossble to get e.g. a lead gen / affiliate model.

RECOMMENDATION: Don’t completely go back to old habits but ensure your key events whether they are standard or custom conversions are defined / firing properly. As the ecosystem becomes more server / API led, this is critical to focus on primary events vs things tracked for the sake of it.

EU ADVERTISER DISCLAIMERS

In another European specific change, anyone running ads to an European user will be required to add some additional transparency within the ad setup, namely:

• Designate who will benefit from the ad (beneficiary)

• Who is paying for the ad (organisation)
  

This is to bring Meta more in line with European data regulation, namely GDPR and how it is interpreted. There is of course going to be alignment to the recent legal tangles that Meta have found themselves in but putting an effort to appease to these rules is a benefit for showing that they can adjust their ad product appropriately when required.

It is also important to note that this is not necessarily specific to European advertisers. If you are an advertiser that has no geo targeting i.e. targets all location, you will be forced to implement this change also.

For now these changes have come out through the marketing API to start with as covered here.

But it will come to the core ad build process in due course.

RECOMMENDATION: This is not really a heavy lift and if your Business Manager / Page is verified already, there will not be much to worry about. But verification is important when considering this change. For UK advertisers, this should be immune based on no longer being in the EU.