Facebook’s Removal of Health-Related Targeting Is No Cause for Concern

Facebook recently announced it is making an important update to its targeting capabilities in the new year. Specifically, Detailed Targeting options (aka “interest targeting”) related to “topics people may perceive as sensitive” will no longer be available for use in advertising campaigns starting on January 19, 2022.

The platform will no longer allow advertisers to target users based on race, ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, sexual orientation or health. Regarding health, Facebook provided three specific examples that will be removed: “Lung Cancer Awareness,” “World Diabetes Day” and “Chemotherapy.”

This decision means that much, perhaps all, of the disease state and advocacy-related interest
targeting previously available for Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns will no longer be available. It also means that advertisers will need to explore different targeting strategies and lean on page and website retargeting and custom audience features, as the platform is encouraging that approach more and more.

The good news is that savvy marketers are well positioned for this change. If they haven’t already, they should establish custom audiences of users who have engaged with their content and web properties.

This update also makes first- and third-party data even more valuable. Swoop, a Real Chemistry company that builds high-quality, privacy safe condition audiences using health claims data modeling, is uniquely positioned to replace any health targeting that Facebook removes. Unlike Facebook interests, which are available to all advertisers, Swoop segments are exclusive and built from scratch to the custom needs of each specific activation.

Although the full impact of this new update is not yet known and will require strategic shifts for many advertisers, it should not be a cause for alarm for those who have been active on Facebook for some time or for those with access to high-quality first- and third-party data. No matter what additional changes we can expect from Facebook, a data-driven approach remains the most impactful and future-proof method available on this platform – or any other.