# Watch Out For Special Ad Categories On Facebook!

Channel: Ben Heath
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXCKQrhVNy4
Duration: 13 min
Language: English
Words: 2798
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/vXCKQrhVNy4

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[0:00] hi guys it's ben heath from lead guru and in this video i'm going to explain what facebook's special ad categories are you may have seen that at the campaign level special ad categories there's a lot you need to know about them because if you get this wrong you can have your ads disapproved your whole facebook ad account disabled so we're going to go through what specialized categories are what that means and what you need to do with your facebook ad campaigns before i get into that one very quickly ask you to smash that like button and of course subscribe to my channel if you are new and haven't done

[0:26] so already okay so i'm in the example facebook ad account and let's go ahead and create an example campaign i'm just going to go with conversions click continue and then you will see that at the campaign level we've got this special ad category section now facebook say here you're required to declare if your ads are related to credit employment or housing opportunities all related to social issues elections and politics and if you click on the default is to have no categories declared so if you were to not select anything here it's very important that your ads don't meet one of these criteria if we open up the

[0:58] criteria you can see we've got credit employment housing social issues elections or politics now facebook introduced this a while ago and they did so because they wanted to help protect their users from what may be seen as discriminatory advertising practices that might be too strong a word but something along along those lines they didn't want advertisers to be able to really specifically target people with bad credit for example and things along those lines okay so they introduce these uh special ad categories they're likely to add to them and make adjustments to this but as it currently stands you need to declare to facebook if you meet one of these

[1:36] criteria now i've had a lot of people ask me questions and leave comments along the things along the lines of i'm not sure whether or not i fall into a special ad category and if you're not sure absolutely go ahead and say that you do it's much better to say that you do fall into a special ad category that when you actually don't or you're on the board line than to do the opposite not declare that you fall into a special ad category as i said very likely your facebook ads get disapproved and actually i've seen tons of ad accounts be disabled because facebook will say hang on you know under

[2:11] review your ads have shown to be related to credit for example they're not you haven't declared that they're related to credit in facebook special ad categories that's a breach of our facebook advertising policies therefore we're shutting down your ad account that happens all the time and when you do select that you're a specialized category you'll see that certain uh restrictions are placed on your advertising capabilities so let's in fact before i select one let's just do a little comparison so the main differences that you'll see if you are um advertising within a special ad category are the targeting capabilities so i've just jumped to the answer level

[2:47] and if i scroll down to the targeting section here in the audience section you can see that this looks just like regular uh ad set targeting sort of thing you're likely to see okay if i jump back to the campaign level and i select for example that we are advertising something in relation to housing as an example and you can see facebook gives some more information around housing what that means you know as i said it was brought in a lot to do non-discrimination um purposes and there's some other information here i'll let you go through all of those um to it if you fall in with the ones specific

[3:22] of those four then you want to go through the the details but i want to show you what that means at the outset level so if i scroll down now to audience we'll see that under the custom audiences section we've now got an extra little pop-up from facebook saying when using a custom audience be sure that your audience selections do not discriminate against people based on certain personal characteristics to be probably honest facebook doesn't um like that wouldn't want that anyway okay um but it's just highlighting that it's probably more important when it comes to special ad categories to be absolutely above board i mean this is referring to

[3:58] the targeting section but we've known for a while that in the ad level for example you want to be careful saying things like have you do you are you or identifying anyone by personal characteristics that's not something that they that people want and if you're uploading let's say externally acquired lists like email lists and things like that just make sure you're very aware of this and you don't uh break the rules if you fall under special ad categories very very important so that applies obviously to custom audiences um which are primarily going to be in this case uploaded email lists although you could have other types of custom audiences um like

[4:32] website visitors and uh even on app in-app activity-based custom audiences like video viewers um things like that people have engaged with your facebook page i'll include a link in the description below to another video talking all about custom audiences and creating them and things like that because you might find that um useful as we're focusing on it you will also see that down here in the detailed targeting section we've got another little pop-up because we're we've added a special ad category and it says here some detailed targeting options which may include demographics behaviors or interests are unavailable and that's probably one of the most significant changes that you'll see if

[5:06] you're part of a specialized category is that you cannot use certain targeting options uh what targeting options are removed changes all the time and facebook i said are increasing this and so i don't want to go through like the specifics of this isn't there and that's not there but it's it's a lot of things that you would expect things that again could potentially be used to discriminate against certain groups and you know again i reckon that's probably too strong a word in a lot of places but go after you know specifically target certain groups with your advertising interestingly which i find um fascinating and something that facebook

[5:41] have i didn't initially introduce but have now introduced um with the special ad categories is this line here excluding any detailed targeting selection is unavailable what they're basically saying is that with this special ad category selected you cannot use open or broad targeting so you have to use some targeting options but you can't um use all the targeting options that you would otherwise be able to use i find that very interesting i i struggle to understand why i guess they don't want you to just leave it open to anyone and then facebook's algorithms machine learning process find exactly who you want to target seems a little

[6:15] bit strange to me but um but that's something that we're seeing that's something that facebook have said and if facebook said you've gotta follow the rules i wouldn't be surprised if we see more stuff added special ed categories and if special ad categories are tightened down on so for example i wouldn't be surprised that if the detailed targeting option list that's currently unavailable for special ad categories but available for regular facebook advertising gets uh grows more detailed targeting options are added to the list where you can't target but you know it almost seems contradictory that you can't go ahead and advertise um you know to open broad targeting that

[6:52] seems that seems a little bit strange okay so if we jump back to the campaign level now and obviously we had housing selected that's what we've just talked through and you'll see that there's four options in here there's uh housing employment credit and you can have multiple ones by the way you could be involved in credit employment and housing or often for example credit housing may work together that sort of thing um however and that's absolutely fine you can declare multiple ones and as i said if you're bored line or think you could be including one much better to declare that you are in a special ad category

[7:22] than not the downsides of not doing so are significantly worse than having certain targeting options curtailed right but if we get rid of those and we select social issues elections or politics whilst that is one of the special ad categories it is treated slightly differently than you know these other options these other specialized categories it's almost a it's almost a special ad category within the special ad categories and the main thing i wanted to highlight was exactly what you can see popping up on my screen right now you need to verify your identity and create a disclaimer to run ads about social issues elections or politics very obvious as to why facebook

[7:57] have added this in um there was a lot of bad press associated with facebook being involved in elections and politics and things like that so they're trying to be more transparent about all that works i imagine most of you watching this if you are um involved in a special ad category it's going to be one of these three it's gonna be housing employment credit it's less likely to be social issues elections or politics but it's possible in which case you will have to come in here and i'll have another video about this at some point um but you'll have to basically verify your identity create a disclaimer and

[8:30] you have to be authorized to run ads in this special ad category which obviously makes things more difficult but it's just a fact again you have to follow the rules there's no workarounds for these things um i said most of you i imagine that fall into special ad categories that are watching my content are going to fall into these three one of these three or maybe multiple of these three um and maybe you have and this is why it's set at the campaign level as well by the way guys because perhaps you could run an ad for you know some sort of employment related uh even though your business has nothing

[9:00] to do with the other specialized categories you could be running a campaign for to find a certain employee or you know got internships or whatever and that would fall under a specialized category but maybe the rest of your campaigns don't which is why you set it at the campaign level and as i said i would encourage you let's say you click on credit for example i would go in and take a c um category requirements they do change a bit between them there's there's a lot of overlap in here that you'll find they do change a little bit between them but you want to read through and say things

[9:28] like in for example credit opportunities ads that promote or directly into credit opportunity including what nominative credit card offers auto loans personal business service loans mortgage loans long-term financing must comply with advertisements so it gives you some examples further clarification and it says as in the special category you must not discriminate against people based on a whole bunch of different things that's going to apply to all of them but there are a few little bit of differences and you probably want to check out the advertising policies again that relate to the specific special outcast screen in fact i'll include another link in the description to a whole video i've got

[9:58] about facebook advertising policies and things you want to watch out for and if you're concerned about your ad account maybe getting disabled which i think all facebook advertisers shouldn't be paranoid about but it should be in the back of your mind that okay there might be extra things i need to do to protect myself here then you can go ahead and um and check through that video you might find it quite helpful be in the video description below okay hopefully that's been useful hopefully that's cleared up some things around what special ad categories are um what you need to do basically declare it what that means in terms of your

[10:26] campaigns and some of the questions you've got around that before you go a couple of things i want to quickly mention the first is a free webinar i've created called three killer facebook ad strategies to double or more your revenue completely free link is in the video description below i would strongly recommend you check it out it's all about strategy i break down three strategies that we use as a facebook ads agency all the time you need to have the right strategy for your products and services if you want to succeed with facebook advertising and that's exactly what that webinar shows you have to do shows you how to advertise a 30 product

[10:53] or a 10 000 service anything in between or above or below or whatever um strongly recommend you check that out completely free link in the video description other thing i want to mention is um i've recently added youtube channel membership as an option so you can now become a member of my youtube channel and members get certain advantages the first thing is prioritization on replying to comments as my channel has grown i get tons and tons of comments i'm not able to answer every single one so i'm going to be prioritizing people who comment who are also members i'm still going to be engaging with other comments as much as

[11:28] i can but they're going to get priority um you also i'm also going to do member only polls so i'll ask my uh people who become members of my channel what sort of content topics they want me to create next if they've got particular subjects like for example special ad categories they want me to cover then then i'll ask them and you can have a say in an input and also if you want to help support the channel becoming a member it's it's a small monthly fee if you have found value for my content i know a lot of people have tons of people left comments saying they want to find a

[11:55] way to help my channel grow or or pay me back for some of the the the tons of the free content that i've provided that's been beneficial that's a great way to help support the channel help be involved and all that sort of stuff and so if that sounds good then you can go ahead and click on the join buttons there's a join button now beneath alongside the subscribe button beneath this video um and you know when you click on that button it doesn't automatically do it you can check out the details and then you can click through and and go ahead and become a member and if you do thank you very much

[12:24] if you don't that's also absolutely fine you're very welcome to keep consuming my content and without becoming a member and commenting and all that sort of stuff is absolutely fine as well if you enjoyed this video thumbs up please that's much appreciated helps me out subscribe if you're new and haven't done so already i release facebook advertising related content all the time um if that's something that's important to your business would strongly strongly recommend you subscribe i'll keep you up to date with all the stuff and all the changes because there's tons of those in this industry and yeah comment below whether you're whether you become a

[12:52] member or not comment below let me know how this is i'll do my best to still answer uh tons of comments particularly when when videos are new so get your comments in and um yeah thanks a lot guys and i'll talk to you soon bye for now

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