Changes to Google Ads and Facebook Advertising

Changes to Google Ads and Facebook Advertising in 2022

If you manage a Facebook Business Page or own a Google Ads account, you may have received an email recently about the upcoming changes to Online Advertising coming into effect in 2022.

Another Facebook change? What now? Facebook has made many changes since launching ads in 2007, including changing their name of their parent company from Facebook to Meta.

Here are a few things you should think about when faced with these advertising changes (which we would love to set up for you! – just send us a message!).

• How are these online ads changing?
• How will these changes effect your Edmonton business?
• How will you adapt to these changes?

What has changed with Facebook Advertising?

Facebook will be changing and removing some detailed targeting options. Not necessarily because it will improve ads but because of their consultants in the civil rights and policy sectors (and the Facebook stakeholders) are requesting the update.

You will still have the ability to create some targeted ADs. However, Facebook is making some parts of their advertising platform less personalized to improve people’s evolving expectations of how advertisers may reach them on the Facebook platform.

These changes came into effect on January 19, 2022. 

Which targeted Facebook ads options are getting removed?

The options that will be removed involve topics that Facebook has categorized as sensitive like:

• Health
• Ethnicity
• Race
• Sexual orientation
• Religion
• Political beliefs

Certain subjects will also be removed under the new Facebook advertising changes

Facebook Business Pages will no longer be able to target certain subjects as well. Anything that focuses on Health, Politics, or Social Issues.

• Diseases and Causes “World Cancer Day”
• Sexual Orientation “LGBTQ Culture”
• Religious Practices and Groups “Jewish Holiday’s”
• Civil Rights Activism
• Political Beliefs

Here are a few more details about Meta’s new Facebook AD changes.

Continuing to Reach Your Audience

If you want to continue to reach your target demographic, there are a few things you can do to reach the people that care about your ads.

• Engagement Custom Audience – targeting people who have already liked your Page, or who have watched your video when it showed up in their Facebook feed.
• Lookalike Audiences – using your Engagement Custom Audience to create a similar ad group called a Lookalike.
• Website Custom Audience – if you already have a list of people who have engaged with your website. (Think Pixel)
• Location Targeting Audience – helps you reach people within a certain distance from your brick and mortar store.
• Customer Lists from a Custom Pre-Approved List – You must have permission to contact, but if you do, you can target them!

How do you know if you are using one of these  removed target audiences

The deadline is January 19, 2022 but most accounts won’t see changes until after March 17th, 2022. If your ad chooses a targeting option that has been removed you will see a message from Facebook:

“Error code 100, sub code 18157520: Cannot Use Invalid Detailed Targeting Options: Some of Your Detailed Targeting Options Have Been Removed:

This means that your AD includes detailed targeting options that are no longer available or that are unavailable when excluding people from your audience.

Try removing items from your AD then confirm the changes to turn it back on. 

Google Ads Changes in 2022

Coming up in June 2022, Expanded Text Ads (ETAs) are going to be replaced by Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) as the new default ad for standard search campaigns. If you have tried the RSAs AD type it is very helpful with suggesting adaptations for your Google Ads.

If you have an existing ETAs ad you can keep running it indefinitely. Except, you can’t edit them anymore. You can still pause or remove them.

Starting off you can create up to 15 adaptive headlines and 4 descriptions based on relevant messages about your Edmonton business. After a while, your Google Ads will learn which ads perform best.

Now you can find things like  top performing headlines, descriptions, and different combos of the two.

What BERT Means for Google Ads

The new Google Algorithim is called BERT, it is a neural network-based technique for natural language processing (NLP) called Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers, or as Google calls it–BERT, for short.

Previously Google would disclude words from your search and give you a close match based on what it deemed was the important part.

Now with BERT Google has come to a new realization with understanding search terms. All words need to be interpreted together, returning more targeted and informed organic results.

BERT may not be as forgiving and those paid search ads that do not clearly align with user intent may need to pay a higher premium for that top spot.

Data Protection Regulation

Google plans to phase out browser cookies off Chrome by 2023. Moving towards the era of cookieless browsing. This is part of a broader movement to protect consumer data. There was the iOS 14 update, which now requires that all apps must get permission before tracking certain types of user data. Google announced that it’s limiting the data it shares with it’s third parties to remain in compliance with European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

These new data restrictions are here to stay and more are coming. For Google Ads, new data restrictions significantly shrink the user data you rely on to run efficient ad campaigns.

Great strides are being made in Personal Privacy giving users more control of their own data and isn’t a bad thing.

Embrace the change. These days, brands are finding that customers prefer companies that protect their data and respect their privacy preferences. I know I do!