Meta Announces Biggest Ads Update in Health & Wellness Sector

This is so far the biggest update!

I have seen in Meta ads in 2024. The new year is just around the corner and Meta has announced a few major updates that will majorly affect the “Health”, “Wellness” and “Financial” category businesses.

These changes will be implemented from January 2025 from Meta’s end, and the advertisers who fall into this category have already started getting pop-ups regarding their new update.

This is huge! Trust me!

What Is Meta’s New Health Ad Policy?

Advertisers whose website/app or end goal falls under Health, Wellness, Finance & Politics will be affected by the new ad policy:

Campaign Limitation

You might be aware that Meta offers various campaign options for running ads: Like sales, leads, awareness, Traffic, and a few more.

Well, this was earlier available for all industries, but according to Meta’s new ad policy, only limited campaigns will be available. These industries will not be able to run Lead or sales campaigns, which basically means they will not be able to run lower funnel campaigns.

What does this mean?

This means you can only run upper funnel campaigns like awareness and engagement campaigns.

You might be wondering why?

First of all, you need to know all the advertising policies Meta had announced which you can read from here.

A lot of cases have been filed against “Meta” for showcasing ads of different products that might harm someone’s lifestyle.

Basically, these are called misleading ads, where advertisers advertise something else and sell something else, or it can be an ad where you give a “validation” of your product (for example Weight loss, Intimate health supplements)

READ: What Is The Average ROAS Of Facebook Ads?

What can you do now?

The answer to this is pretty simple. You can now run ads in awareness, campaigns, or engagement campaigns for likes and video views or in traffic campaigns for link clicks. However, you will not be able to use sales or lead campaigns as an objective and get actual sales or leads for your business. This means if you have to run ads, you have to optimize your upper funnel campaigns as much as you can.

Since Meta has removed bottom-funnel campaigns for the sectors, it will be interesting to see how upper-funnel campaigns perform for them or give them conversions.

Can’t Use CAPI Anymore

If you fall under this you will not be able to use the conversion API feature anymore. A lot of you might not know what a conversion API is so let me give you a clear perspective first.

So conversion API is a feature where you can track data directly from your website server and send that data to the Facebook server so that Facebook can optimize your ad in a much better way. For example, you want to target people who have already visited your website or interacted with your website, this is possible with the help of conversion API and Pixel.

So all in all, you won’t be able to use that feature anymore, if you fall under any of the categories mentioned above.

Why this?

Well, you might be wondering why Facebook disable this feature for a specific sector and not for everyone. The answer is pretty clear. Mehta doesn’t want to track someone’s health condition, financial condition, or political condition and that’s why they have removed this option so that every user's privacy remains their first priority.

What if you are still using it?

Meta will automatically categorize your ad under different sections or sectors after reading your previous ad campaigns. If you come under categories, that are restricted to use some features in meta ads, and if you are still trying to use it, Facebook will restrict your account or it might restrict some of the features you have.

So you will have to be most careful with what you do on Facebook ads in 2025.

What if you are categorized into the wrong category?

If you are in the health sector or finance sector or political sector, you will see that Mehta might have assigned a category to you, and if this category is assigned, you won’t be able to use the features I mentioned above.

In such situations, if you think that Meta has categorized you in a different industry, or you are not able to use the features because of the industry, you are categorized into (which of course, you don’t come under) then you can send a review of your ad manager to Meta.

It will take 7-8 days, and if you are genuinely not in that category, Meta will automatically remove you from there. But if the review gets denied, you won’t be able to apply in the next 30 days.

Will Your Business Be Affected?

If we talk about health category, if your product is under some health problems, medical conditions or patient data, then you won’t be able to run lower funnel ads starting from January 2025.

For example, you sell a tracking meter of depression (that is not something you will be able to do)

If you have a health supplement brand, there are great chances that you might not get affected, but if you provide some specific medications or prescription-related medicines or a specific disease medicine, this guideline will cover you.

If we talk about the Finance industry, if you give finance services, finance tools, or finance consultation, you will be coming under this category.

It’s pretty early to say what will happen after this properly rolls out, we will just have to wait and see what happens! Until then you can definitely leave your comments and opinions below.

Until then, Happy Digital Learning 😍

DAMINI TRIPATHI