A major change was made by the facebook advertising team, which while is not an actual change in their rules, it is a change in how they are enforcing them. As one representative told me, they will no longer allow advertising that calls out demographics unless its specific to the demographic – any product that is actually available to all demographics cannot mention the demographic. This includes having the demographics on the landing page.

    This will affect millions of dollars a day on facebook, since there are many direct marketers who are using the targeting feature in order to gain better conversions. While many products are indeed open to all age groups, marketers have often found out that targeting specific groups and then confirming that age group on a secondary page does more than just generate clicks – it generates more interest in a product, as it’s seen as a way to identify with the consumer. If a product “knows” your age, then its more likely that a consumer will feel more comfortable with the product.

   That being said, it’s understandable why Facebook is doing this also. They want to allow people to demographically target people, but at the same time make it not so obvious to the user in an age of concerns about privacy. They are also concerned that with the use of this marketing ability, if it’s overused then it’s less effective for the growing amount of brand advertisers that they are trying to get. They see the direct response market, while profitable for them right now, a short term and want more and more major brands to use their system to demographically target consumers.

   Either way, the effect will be serious to many, many people making money on facebook that have relied on this technology to enhance their direct response products, and will significantly decrease the click-through and conversion rates of their ads. Facebook, which has a very low click-rate in general for general interest based ads, will probably see a significant short term drop in revenue because of this. Still, as we all know, direct response marketers are a smart crowd and will soon find another way to use the system to their and Facebook’s benefit.

All advertisers are encouraged to use Facebook's targeting options, as this allows users to see ads that are of high interest and relevance. However, as noted in section 7a of the Facebook Ad Guidelines, "any targeting of ads based on a user attribute, such as age, gender, location, or interest, must be directly relevant to the offer". Ads that unnecessarily call out user attributes in the ad creative or landing page are in violation of this guideline and run contrary to Facebook’s overall advertising philosophy.

Please edit or delete any ads that which employ this tactic and do not submit any new ads that call out personally identifiable user attributes, including but not limited to age, gender, workplace, school or location. Ads that remain active are subject to removal and their performance history lost. This includes ads with landing pages edited to appear relevant to the target group; if the offer advertised is available to a larger demographic, ads may not use any user's personally identifiable information to imply that the offer is limited to that group.