The Facebook Marketing API will add a new category of ads that are specifically dedicated to advertising housing, employment and credit. By doing this, Facebook continues to take action to prevent advertisers from running ads that discriminate against certain groups of users.
Next month, Facebook will add the same special ad category to the API that it launched in Ads Manager in July. Updates affecting marketers and developers of housing, employment and credit will reduce the set of demographic, behaviour and interest targeting options, and make some of the exclusion options available to prevent discriminatory advertising.
The new category will be available in the API from September 16th. All users who use and advertise the API in these fields in the US must implement the so-called Special Ad Category by December 4, 2019, at the latest. Otherwise, Facebook will pause your ads due to non-compliance. If you do not fall under the area of housing, employment or credit, check the “none” option in the category.
Recently, Facebook has already taken several steps against discrimination in ad targeting. For example, in March, they announced that they would abolish targeting filters such as age, gender, and ZIP code for housing, employment and credit and that they wanted to continue in this direction. The result is a simultaneous update. This is valid for the US market but is likely to be extended to other countries.
Interested in learning more? Read the full explanation from Facebook.