# Targeting Options are DISAPPEARING!? (Facebook Ads) Channel: Ben Heath Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lNcSF-Gph8 Duration: 7 min Language: English Words: 1559 Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/8lNcSF-Gph8 --- [0:00] meta has just started removing Facebook ads targeting options they did this 2 years ago and they decided to remove a lot more targeting options now you can't give getting away with it he can't keep getting away with it in this video I'm going to explain what's happening and what it means for Facebook advertisers so to explain what's happening I've got meta's um support doc up about this where they they announce this information they're giving us some information around what they're actually doing and why they are removing targeting options now this started January 15th so it's been going on a little bit now like with most things to [0:28] do with meta they've started with a few ad accounts and they're sort of rolling this out slowly it also looks like they haven't just decided to remove all the targeting options that they want to remove in one go they've removed a few and they're going to remove more and more over time it's often how meta rolls out new features and things like that to make sure that it doesn't break Facebook advertising when they Implement these changes okay but if we have a look at the detail of what they say here right so starting January 15th 2024 we're removing a consolidating some detailed targeting options that relate to topics [0:56] people may perceive as sensitive so so what does that mean well we all know that nowadays some people are sensitive about just about everything right so this gives meta a lot of flexibility and a lot of leeway to remove a lot of targeting options they did this a couple of years ago the bar has probably shifted on what people are sensitive about now they're probably more sensitive than they were then so more stuff can be removed and they've also decided to retire some targeting options that people don't use very much so that's basically what's happening we don't exactly know how many targeting options this will be it's probably going [1:31] to be relatively significant for them to have announced it and talking about it and stuff like that that will come out over the next few months as we see this take place within our in our ad account but we do have a pretty good idea of what this going to look like because this is not the first time that this has happened so you what you'll see very interestingly is the document I just showed you is very very similar to the one that meta released when they did the exact same thing 2 years ago so here I've got the article up from a couple of years ago when they did the exact same [1:57] thing they started removing um targeting options this was updated you can see the update um over there as it went on but you can see here look starting January 19th 2022 we will remove detailed targeting options that relate to topics people may perceive as sensitive and then they go on to give some more information so it's literally basically the exact same line they're just doing it again two years on um and we found that a lot of targeting options were removed with that um change and a lot of ones where people were thinking how are people sensitive about that H how is that a problem why has that been removed [2:27] and and a bit confused about it and advertising did lose their targeting options unfortunately I think the same thing is about to happen now so I'm going to explain what we need to do this as Facebook advertisers in a minute before I do just want to quickly let you know about my Facebook group so I've got a Facebook group called The Facebook ads Mastermind group and it's the largest Facebook group in the world for Facebook advertisers if you want better results with Facebook an Instagram ad I'd strongly recommend you go ahead and join it's completely free to do so I do free live trainings in there and you'd be [2:54] able to connect with other Facebook advertisers ask them questions hopefully save you a lot of trial and error and shortcut your path to success with Facebook ad so there's a link in the description go ahead and click on that and go ahead and join your group and I'll see you in there now as I said we don't know exactly what these changes are going to entail some ad accounts have had these removed yet we don't seem to have in our accounts that we're managing we know that this is being rolled out so that's not surprising at this point uh but we do know that some advertisers are unfortunately going to [3:18] lose their targeting options what is this and you'll probably have a little bit of leeway where you'll be able to advertize to those um targeting options that you're previously using that are being retired for a couple of months and then those adsets will become inactive at some point that's unfortunate that's not what advertisers want but it is in keeping with the trend that we're seeing and meta is pushing more and more advertisers towards open targeting towards broad targeting and basically saying meta is saying to advertisers let us handle the targeting options for you you go ahead and work out all the other stuff right so we see with things like [3:51] Advantage Plus shopping campaigns there are no targeting inputs with Advantage Plus audience there are targeting suggestions as opposed to hard lines and criteria so that's all moving in that One Direction where we're going to be using open targeting and putting more trust in meta now one potential difference that we're seeing with this change with these targeting options being removed as opposed to what happened two years ago is that meta is now much better at actually doing that at actually doing the targeting for us they were getting pretty good at it in 2022 in 2024 we're seeing uh much better results from trusting matters AI machine learning process and working out who to [4:28] Target how often to Target them and all that sort of stuff and giving them the biggest possible leeway the most flexibility to go ahead and do that and because of that targeting inputs are just a lot less necessary now than they used to be and I've talked about it in previous videos a lot of my audience has been testing open targeting or things like Advantage Plus audience where their suggestions as opposed to hard constraints and seeing better results than the more narrow specific targeting than they were doing previously is that the case in all scenarios no we still have ad campaigns where we're targeting specific um audiences and there are [5:01] still advertisers where that's where they see the best results and this is not ideal for those people at all and I fully appreciate that but I do think in terms if we look at the overall Facebook and Instagram advertising landscape is this change going to significantly negatively impact it no I don't think it is and as meta continues to become better and better and better at handling the targeting for us I think changes like this are going to be less impactful and we may well see Meta decide to remove targeting options detailed targeting options all together it might just be a simple setup kind of like the [5:31] audience control section within Advantage Plus audience you are able to set certain things like a minimum age criteria depending on what you advertise and you're able to advertise in a specific location and then otherwise you say to meta I'm in this category I'm in the marketing category I'm in the sports apparel category I'm in the Home Services category and then mea just works out the rest of the targeting for us I could see something like that happening I hope it doesn't but I could see that happening and I don't think that by any means means that the death of Facebook advertising or anything like that I think we can still get great [6:02] results Facebook and Instagram ads with meta handling a lot of this stuff we can see that cuz so often we're using open targeting now um and we just need to focus on the other things that we know matter now a lot more than targeting because realistically targeting is not going to be a place where you are likely to get an advantage over your competition as long as you're just not targeting an audience that's too small that would be a big targeting mistake your targeting is probably okay and it's other areas where you need to out compete your comp competitors in order to win in order to capture the that [6:32] market share and and convert those prospects into customers it's going to be things like your offer things like the ads themselves so the creative and the ad copy and I show you exactly how to create high converting ads quickly and easily in this video here implementing this is one of the best uses of your time as a Facebook Advertiser go ahead and check it out --- About this transcript Read from YouTube's own caption track and laid out by ViewRank AI (https://viewrankai.com). ViewRank AI finds the videos already beating a creator's own average on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts, transcribes them from the audio itself in more than 60 languages, and turns what worked into new ideas and scripts. Free transcript tools, no account needed: https://viewrankai.com/tools How to read any video this way: https://viewrankai.com/llms.txt