Yellow Light for All Meta Advertising: Big Changes in Location Targeting on the Horizon

Pricing Integrations

Yellow Light for All Meta Advertisers: Big Changes in Location Targeting on the Horizon

June 29, 2023

In the world of digital advertising, location targeting has been a game-changer for marketers. The ability to reach the right audience, in the right place, and at the right time has significantly enhanced the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. Meta, a prominent platform in the digital advertising space, has recently been testing a significant update related to location targeting. Let’s take a look at how location targeting is useful for reaching a specific target audience, the targeting options offered by Meta advertising, and how the new updates for location targeting will affect your campaigns.

The Power of Location Targeting

With the transition from traditional media to digital media, location targeting emerged as a major advantage. Advertisers gained the ability to precisely target users in specific areas, allowing them to deliver more relevant and tailored advertisements. By honing in on location-based preferences, marketers can reach potential customers who are most likely to engage with their products or services.

Additional Location Targeting Options Available on Meta

Prior to the update, Meta advertising offered four additional location targeting options to advertisers. These options were:

1. People living in or recently in this location

2. People living in this location

3. People recently in this location

4. People traveling in this location

Each option provided a different level of precision, enabling advertisers to align their targeting strategies with their specific business goals. For instance, if a business aimed to attract customers to a physical store, selecting the "People living in this location" option made the most sense, as it excluded individuals residing far away from the store.

The New Update

In the recent update being tested by Meta advertising, significant changes have been made to the available location targeting options. Presently, only the "People living in or recently in this location" option is accessible, while the other options have been temporarily removed from some ad accounts. At GrowMetrics, we always prioritise educating our clients about new updates. Therefore, we reached out to Meta for clarification on this particular change. According to their explanation, they are currently testing it with select ad accounts before implementing it across all ad accounts.

Implications for Advertising Results

As advertisers navigate these changes, it is important to consider the potential impact on advertising results. While it is too early to provide a definitive evaluation, there is a possibility that the quality of the results may be affected. However, given Meta's focus on automating various aspects of ad creation, it is reasonable to anticipate that they are exploring ways to enhance the "Living in or recently in" option through integration with artificial intelligence (AI) technology. This integration could potentially yield improved targeting results for advertisers, even with the removal of the previous location targeting options.

Meta is constantly improving their technology and it is important to keep up to date with their latest updates. For more information on Facebook targeting, check out our article here.