How to Identify & Reach a Facebook Audience in 2024 (A Guide to Religious & Political Advertising)
Remember when Facebook placed a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal declaring that they were “…standing up to Apple for small businesses everywhere”? That was back in December of 2020, and it was in response to the impact that Apple’s iOS14 update would have on Facebook’s ad tracking methods.
Their attempt to fight Apple failed and the changes they feared eventually took effect in April of 2021. The impact was significant for many advertisers because, as CNBC reported, 62% of iPhone users opted out.
Advertisers suddenly faced radically reduced audience sizes because of this disruption.
However, another significant change was announced by Facebook almost exactly one year later (on November 9, 2021). But this time, no full-page ad explained the impact it would have on small businesses.
For many companies, this change is even more disruptive than the one brought about by iOS14.
Since many of our partners have asked us to help them understand these changes and pivot accordingly, we prepared this article for them and for anyone else looking for answers (or for those looking for a glimmer of hope).
In this article, we will discuss:
The timeline of this disruption
What it means
What it doesn’t mean
How to identify and reach a Facebook audience in 2023
The good news (yes, there’s a bright side)
How this disruption might impact Facebook/Meta
The Timeline
There are 3 dates related to this disruption: November 9, 2021, January 19, 2022, and March 17, 2022.
Date #1: November 9, 2021
On November 9, 2021, Meta announced that an undisclosed number of audience targeting options would be removed from Facebook’s ad platform on January 19, 2022. Here is an excerpt from that announcement:
“Starting January 19, 2022 we will remove Detailed Targeting options that relate to topics people may perceive as sensitive, such as options referencing causes, organizations, or public figures that relate to health, race or ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, or sexual orientation.”
Although many sectors are impacted, this article will focus primarily on the “religion” component - more precisely the impact this change has on advertisers who need to identify and reach Christian audiences.
Date #2: January 19, 2022
Advertisers were given a little more than 2 months to prepare for the removal of these audience-targeting options. Any campaign that was set up and running before January 19, 2022, would be allowed to continue reaching their original audiences until March 17, 2022, but all new campaigns built on or after January 19, 2022, would not be allowed to use them.
Two months’ notice seems like plenty of time, but Facebook never provided clarity about which options (or how many of them) would be removed. The absence of this detail made it difficult for advertisers to know how extensive the damage would be, making it challenging to prepare for the disruption.
Facebook’s initial announcement included only a handful of specific examples:
Health causes (e.g., “Lung cancer awareness”, “World Diabetes Day”, “Chemotherapy”)
Sexual orientation (e.g., “same-sex marriage” and “LGBT culture”)
Religious practices and groups (e.g., “Catholic Church” and “Jewish holidays”)
Political beliefs, social issues, causes, organizations, and figures
A New York Times article published on November 9, 2021, stated that “Meta plans to remove thousands of sensitive ad-targeting categories.” But, with many tens of thousands of targeting options available, it was still unclear how comprehensive it would be.
Few people anticipated that Meta would remove virtually all of the options for identifying and reaching a Christian audience.
Their examples for religion in their original announcement only included “Catholic Church” and “Jewish Holidays.” These two examples prompted many advertisers to assume that similar broad categories like those 2 would be excluded but that many other niche targeting options would remain.
For example, many advertisers expected to see the removal of audiences interested in Jesus (416M people) or the Bible (292M people), but they held out hope that a Christian audience could still be built based on those who follow Christian celebrities, authors, Christian music artists, etc.
That is not the case. Meta was very thorough and comprehensive in their audit of interests that relate to a Christian audience. The graph below shows the previous size of the top Christian interest targets which are no longer available.
Date #3: March 17, 2022
Discerning marketers who planned ahead and strategically built campaigns before January 19, 2022, are allowed to continue targeting those audiences until March 17, 2022, when they will all be removed entirely.
March 17, 2022, is when virtually every way of identifying and reaching Christian audiences through Facebook’s “Detailed Targeting” methods becomes a thing of the past.
Note: Continue reading to see that there are still ways to reach Christian audiences - just not through the “Detailed Targeting" functionality.
Before we address ways to continue using Facebook successfully, let’s unpack a little more of the details regarding what else is affected by this change. The impact is greater than it first appears.
What This Means
Not only are all Christian interests removed as targetable audiences (i.e., topics, people, or businesses that they like, follow, or engage with), other categories for targeting have also been removed, including:
Job titles
Employers
Schools
Fields of study
To be clear, these 4 categories still exist as viable targeting options for most secular job titles, employers, schools, and fields of study, but all religious variations have been removed (i.e., pastor, church, seminaries, religious degrees and fields of study).
Why do these 4 additional categories of targeting matter? This is how you reach church leaders.
Many Christian organizations, ministries, and businesses are dependent on reaching church leaders and these 4 targeting layers enabled an advertiser to identify and reach them with great success on Facebook.
Pastors, denominational leaders, and other forms of church or ministry staff are the decision-makers and influencers that producers of Christian content and products need to reach in order to survive, grow, and fulfill their mission.
Many large Christian organizations were built off of very successful ads directed exclusively to church leaders through the powerful targeting options previously available within Facebook.
They could identify church leaders by their job title, the churches or ministries which employed them, the Christian colleges or seminaries that they graduated from, or the specific field of study or degree that they graduated with (i.e. M.Div).
But today, those options have all been eliminated when a Christian connection is associated with them.
What This Doesn’t Mean
This doesn’t mean that Religious or Political Ads are now Prohibited
Perhaps you breathed a sigh of relief when you learned that political targeting would no longer be available on Facebook. You can’t turn on the tv or scroll through your Facebook feed during election season without being inundated with political ads.
Many of those ads are offensive, unkind, uninteresting, and irrelevant to one’s felt needs. At the very least, many of them are annoying interruptions distracting us from our desired form of entertainment.
I wish I could say that this change means that political ads on Facebook would be a thing of the past, but that is not the case. Meta’s change only impacts the ability to target based on religious and political data points.
Religious and political ads are still allowed. And that is a very good thing for those who depend on religious advertising within Facebook.
This doesn’t mean that Facebook is no longer a viable ad channel
Facebook is still a powerful ad channel. It is hard to beat when it comes to brand awareness, lead-generation, content marketing, virtual event marketing, fundraising, flash sales, and the promotion of low-priced, impulse-buy products.
Even with the challenges ahead for Christian advertisers, for the time being, it still plays an important role in a balanced media mix.
On February 2, 2022, a Washington Post article states that “Facebook lost daily users for the first time in its 18-year history — falling by about half a million users in the last three months of 2021, to 1.93 billion logging in each day.”
Despite this historic decline, there are still 1.93 billion people using it each day and advertisers can continue to leverage Facebook ads to effectively reach their desired audience - it just can’t be done via the “Detailed Targeting” functionality.
So what can we do to reach a specific audience through Facebook Ads?
How to Identify & Reach A Facebook Audience in 2023
There have always been a variety of ways to identify, reach, and build an audience via Facebook Ads. One very powerful method has been eliminated, but many other tactics are still available and, when best practices are applied, they can each produce excellent results.
Retargeting & Lookalikes
You are still able to build audiences based on engagement with your site and social media presence. These audiences can be based on retargeting the same people who engaged with your site and social and you can let Facebook build lookalike audiences based on those original audiences.
Here are just a few ways you can do this. You can retarget or build lookalike audiences based on:
Those who follow, like, or engage with your Facebook page or your Facebook posts (paid or organic)
Video plays of a video contained within a Facebook ad or an organic social post (can be segmented by those who played 3, 10, or 15 seconds or 25%, 50%, 75%, or 95% of the video)
Visits to your homepage or specific pages on your site (you can even select the top 5%, 10%, or 20% by the amount of time they spend on the page)
Specific actions taken on your homepage or specific pages on your site (i.e., sales, leads acquired, content viewed, files downloaded, searches initiated, checkouts initiated, etc.)
Uploads of email lists (best when segmented by leads, paying customers, and customers of specific product types)
Multi-Phase Campaigns
Another way to build an audience on Facebook is to run a campaign in two phases. Start by casting a broad net using content that appeals to your target audience. Use as many targeting options as you can based on your customer personas, but know that because you’re casting a broad net, it will likely be ignored by many people.
However, if a few hundred people take the action that you want (i.e., visit a page, buy a product, become a lead, make a donation, etc.), you can then use a Lookalike audience to try to reach more people who are similar to the ones who just performed your desired action.
If you have a $5,000 budget for a campaign, you could consider using 10-20% of it ($500-$1,000) to build your seed audience and then put the majority (80-90%) into a campaign built on lookalikes.
Parallel Interests
How well do you know your audience? Do you have psychographic data about each customer persona that lists common interests they often share which are beyond just overtly religious categories? If so, you can use that data in a way that enables you to continue using “Detailed Targeting” for targets that are not restricted.
For example, “Christian music” as a category is no longer available and specific Christian music artists are also not available (i.e., Chris Tomlin), but if enough of your specific Christian audience also tends to listen to country music, you can target that as a category and specific country music artists in particular.
Influencer Sponsorships & Brand Collabs Manager
If reaching a specific influencer’s audience is vital to your strategy and that influencer is no longer an option for targeting because of religious reasons, you can consider approaching them with a paid sponsorship offer.
Brand Collabs Manager is a tool that will allow you to run Facebook ads from their Facebook account in a way that lets you reach their audience.
There are other options to consider, but these are some of the top ones that we recommend using while they are still available.
The Good News
Every disruption in marketing brings with it an upside. There are certainly a few advantages to this change. We will present just 3 of them.
Benefit #1: A New, Level Playing Field
First of all, the playing field is now leveled. Everyone in religious and political marketing is affected and that means some of your biggest competitors have a weakness they didn’t have before.
Many of the most dominant players in your sector were overly dependent on interest targeting that no longer exists. They’re scrambling to figure this out. If you can solve this puzzle earlier than your competitors, you will gain an advantage. That’s the exciting part of any disruption in marketing!
Benefit #2: Competitors Can No Longer Target Your Followers
A second advantage is that if you have been identified by Facebook as a religious or political organization, your competitors can no longer target your audience. If you were large enough to be a target in “Detailed Targeting,” that is an advantage to celebrate!
Benefit #3: An Impetus for Change
A third advantage is that you can use this change as a much-needed wake-up call for your organization to diversify and wean off their dependence on Facebook ads.
Conversations like this are long overdue in many companies, but this might be what it takes to get your leadership and marketing team to finally invest in some new ways of reaching your audiences.
For example, if you have products for sale on Amazon, you should be aware that Amazon Advertising has been investing heavily in building a robust suite of audience-targeting methods that are very powerful and effective. Since it is at the point of sale, it is definitely one to prioritize.
It may also be worth considering diversifying your ad strategy by investing more in Google (Google Search, Display, Shopping), YouTube, LinkedIn, TikTok, Pinterest, App store ads, or Spotify.
Note: Amplify specializes in crafting custom-built marketing strategies tailored to your unique market & mission. With strategic consultations & ad management in every platform, we can help you successfully navigate changing landscapes like this.
The Future of Facebook/Meta
What does all of this mean for Facebook? Will this disruption hurt them financially? I won’t attempt to answer that question definitively, but here are two potential ramifications.
Advertisers will leave or lower their Facebook Ad budgets
First, many advertisers will not put in the effort to figure out how to work within the new constraints Facebook is placing upon them and they will move all or some of their ad budgets to other ad channels.
Daily Users will continue to decline
Since there will be many religious and political organizations that can’t (and shouldn’t) abruptly abandon Facebook as an ad channel, some of them will simply broadcast their content as widely as they can afford to in hopes that enough of their target audience will see and engage with it.
This means we may all see more ads in our Facebook feed that aren’t as relevant as they used to be. It is already happening and I can see a change in my own behavior as a result of it. I am checking my Facebook feed less often because it is cluttered with irrelevant ads.
As more Facebook users get frustrated with ads, they will use the app less, will become addicted to a different app (TikTok, for example), and that decline in daily use may have a noticeable impact on Facebook/Meta.
Concluding Thoughts
I hope that some of your questions were answered and that you’re ready to find new and better ways to identify and engage your audience on Facebook while also diversifying your ad strategies to include other channels.
Feel free to share this article with others in your organization who are asking the same questions you are. And please reach out if you have any questions.