How Facebook’s Upcoming Privacy Changes Will Impact Advertisers

No ad platform is left behind with privacy-related changes this month, it seems. Facebook announced today more detail around their upcoming privacy tools. Read on for a quick review of the changes and what marketers should do to prepare.

What’s Happening?

Historically, a user’s off-Facebook activity has been a rich source of targeting for advertisers. For example, getting in front of users who visited the site (website = off-Facebook), users who added to the shopping cart, users who’ve purchased, or users who have downloaded the app (app store = not Facebook). Facebook’s new tool will allow users to prevent that – basically, disallow any advertiser from using that insight to power ads.

What’s the Risk to My Facebook Ads?

Any audience built using off-Facebook behavior will shrink as users opt themselves out of those audiences. As audiences shrink, the resulting reach, impressions, clicks, etc. from those ad sets will also likely decrease. Commonly used audiences in this realm are:

• Site visitors
• Website cart abandoners
• Past purchasers
• App downloaders
• Dormant app users

Action Item 1: Monitor Audience Size Via Google Ads

The most immediate action is to monitor the size of your off-Facebook lists (specifically website lists) to see if and when they start to shrink, and if so by how much. But wait!, you cry, Facebook doesn’t allow me to see that! You’re right, which is where our friend Google comes into play. Most audiences you’ll be able to replicate in Google Ads via URL rules, and then have visibility into the size of that audience and how that size changes over time. The sooner you set these up, the more insight you’ll have into what the audience is pre-change and how Facebook’s new tools affect it.

Action Item 2: Construct Targeting Expansion Strategy to Make Up Lost Volume

At this time, it’s uncertain how much this will affect Custom Audiences. It depends how prominently Facebook features these news tools and how many people use them to opt out. Assuming there is some audience loss, the question then becomes – what are the other most efficient targeting options available to continue overall growth? With thousands of interest, behavior and demographic targeting options available, there’s likely targeting combinations quite relevant to your business just waiting to be discovered.

Need more guidance on how to set up comparable audiences, or craft an expansion strategy for the rest of the year? Reach out to us, our Social team is standing by ready to help!