Concerned over possible abuses of its ad system to harm vulnerable people, Facebook Inc. announced on Tuesday its plans to remove marketing options that allow advertisers to target certain “sensitive” subjects, including race, health, religion and political beliefs or sexual orientation.
The company which makes the vast majority of its revenue through digital advertising, decided to remove detailed ad-targeting options after being under intense scrutiny over its ad-targeting abilities and rules in recent years.
It gave in a blog post examples of targeting categories that would no longer be allowed on its platforms starting Jan. 19, 2022, such as World Diabetes Day, Jewish holidays or political beliefs and social issues.
Facebook has mostly been hit with criticisms around its micro-targeting capabilities such as advertisers discriminating against or targeting vulnerable groups and has agreed two years ago – as part of a settlement over housing discrimination issues- to make changes to its ads platform.
Its vice president of product marketing for ads, Graham Mudd, said in a post that it was not an easy decision to remove these Detailed Targeting options – that were used by wide-ranging advertisers such as political campaigns and social issue groups as well as businesses – since they’re well aware this change may negatively impact some businesses and organizations.
Some of Facebook’s advertising partners also expressed concerns that they would not be able to use these adds to generate positive social change, bit the company pointed to experts’ concerns that ‘targeting options like these could be used in ways that lead to negative experiences for people in underrepresented groups’.
This marks a key shift for Facebooks approach to social and political advertising though it is not expected to have major financial implications since advertisers on Facebook’s platforms can still target audiences by location, they can reach custom audiences, use their own customer lists and send ads to people with similar characteristics to those users.
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