If one thing has held true over the last two years, it's been the constant state of flux on the social media giant that have forced marketers to stay nimble in order to stay relevant. But fear not, the nerds at Wheeler are right there with you! Our team is staying up-to-speed on these changes so that you don't have to. Some of the major highlights for you to know in the most recent update are right here for your reading pleasure:
First things first, Facebook and connected entities like Instagram and WhatsApp, announced they will now be known as part of the Meta brand. Besides conjuring visions of your favorite sci-fi movies, what exactly does this mean? Meta or the metaverse brings together their apps and technologies under one new company brand. Meta’s focus will be to bring the metaverse to life and help people connect, find communities and grow businesses. When Facebook launched in 2004, it changed the way people connect. Apps like Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp further empowered billions around the world. Now, Meta is moving beyond 2D screens toward immersive experiences like augmented and virtual reality to help build the next evolution in social technology.
How will this affect how Facebook operates now? Facebook will still be known as Facebook and operate as Facebook.
The Facebook app used by almost 3 billion people around the world every month will keep its name. But speaking at the company’s Connect Virtual Reality Conference, Zuckerberg said it’s time to overhaul the corporation’s identity to reflect its broader ambitions.
Zuckerberg notes, “It is time for us to adopt a new company brand to encompass everything that we do,” he said. “From now on, we’re going to be metaverse first, not Facebook first.”
For now, Facebook is business as usual. There’s no doubt more is on the horizon to integrate the phases of the “metaverse” creation and how this will impact the other apps under the Meta umbrella.
There is a page that can be followed to learn more about their advances and integration.
One recent update to that has taken place is for Facebook Business Manager. This is now Meta Business Suite. With Meta Business Suite, you can manage all your business activity on Facebook, Messenger and Instagram from one place.
Some highlights include:
Post across platforms. Publish feed posts and stories for both Facebook and Instagram without switching accounts. …
Manage your Inbox.
Create ads.
Track insights and trends.
See all activity at a glance.
Access helpful tools.
For now it appears to be more of a facelift with integrated management options, but this will likely evolve as well.
Now on to more Facebook updates and how this will impact paid campaigns.
On January 19, 2022 Facebook/Meta removed targeting options that relate to topics people may perceive as sensitive, such as options referencing causes, organizations, or public figures that relate to health, race or ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, or sexual orientation. Examples include:
Health causes (e.g., “Lung cancer awareness”, “World Diabetes Day”, “Chemotherapy”)
Sexual orientation (e.g., “same-sex marriage” and “LGBT culture”)
Religious practices and groups (e.g., “Catholic Church”, “catholic” and “Jewish holidays”)
Political beliefs, social issues, causes, organizations, and figures. After this date you can’t target “liberal”, “conservative”, “Democrat”, “Republican” as examples.
The official policy states: Ads must not discriminate or encourage discrimination against people based on personal attributes such as race, ethnicity, color, national origin, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, family status, disability, medical or genetic condition.
This is a part of their Discriminatory Practices.
These changes will directly impact medical and political campaigns and any campaign that is wanting to target by health, race or ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, or sexual orientation. Although this means many of the categories have been pruned, there are many behavioral categories still available to target for almost every business vertical.
One new vertical that is creeping its way into Facebook is CBD. We all know Facebook is a very conservative platform that is constantly under a lot of scrutiny. But CBD has finally made its way on the Facebook map. And so far, we are seeing great success with these campaigns on Facebook.
Now here are a few ground rules.
You can run CBD and hemp product ads on Facebook if you remove all explicit mentions of CBD, hemp, or cannabis from your content.
Run an ad that uses a landing page where your TOPICAL (only) CBD product is sold (or even non-CBD pages). You may be able to have landing pages that solely feature edible hemp products. You can’t have cannabis on the landing page.
Don’t make medical claims and/or mention CBD in the ads at all. Opt for words like “Naturally derived ingredients” or “plant-sourced ingredients” instead.
Don’t use CBD images in the ads.
Custom Audience/Lookalike, Event Response, FAN, FB Premium available as well, with CBD, as well and Instagram.
Here’s categories approved to run on Facebook for CBD Campaigns:
Age
Household Income
Healing
Medicine
Happiness
Life Extension
Health
Health & Wellness
Health & Beauty
Healthy Habits
Healthy Food
Healthy Diet
Healthy Life
Healthy Lifestyles
Natural foods
Natural product
Natural skin care
Organic product
Personal care
Personal development
Quality of life
Self-care
Self-Esteem
Self-awareness
Self-healing
Self-confidence
Self-help
Well-being
Medicine
What about Kratom and Hemp or Delta 8? We have not tested these and may need to run a test ad before this campaign sells because it could get disapproved.
Now with good news, there always come some bad. Aren’t you glad I shared the good news first?
As of October 11, 2021, Facebook has deprecated the offer ads product. Offer ads allowed businesses to add a unique offer or promo code to their ads on Facebook and Instagram, and use an offer-specific call-to-action like “Get Code”.
Facebook notes, “after extensive analysis, we’ve taken the decision to deprecate this product as we build a new Shops offer ads product. Supporting commerce businesses remains an important priority for Facebook, and we’re continuing to explore ways to help businesses further personalize their ads with special offers or promotions to shoppers.”
Digital and couponing were never a perfect match. Consumers are just not trained on how to deal with coupons and offers amongst all our devices, so it becomes clunky at best. This could be a blessing. Maybe the new metaverse can be used to plant the idea in people's brains ala Inception? Just a thought...
I promise you more Facebook updates, changes and enhancements are coming. But don’t worry, we got you covered. If you'd like to put our team of digital experts to work for your business and wash your hands entirely of the responsibility, give us a call!