If you're advertising wellness products on Meta, things have changed.

If you’re a health or wellness brand that advertises on Meta, listen up. This update could redefine your entire business. 

P.S This update was written thanks to Yiqi Wu, ex-Meta engineer and founder of Aimerce - a first-party data tracking Shopify solution for recovering sales lost to Meta/Google privacy updates.

Meta is changing to how it handles ads for health and wellness brands. If you advertise in this category, you will no longer be able to share key event data with Meta. This means that you won't be able to optimize for events like "Purchase" or other lower funnel events.

As you probably already know, optimizing for these events is a critical step in how Meta shows your ads to customers most likely to interact with your ads. 

What happens if I do nothing?

You might see a huge decline in your ROAS. 

How do I know if my brand is affected?

You'll receive notifications (via email, Ad Manager and Events Manager) regarding which ad sets and events are affected.

They will look something like this 

If your brand has been miscategorized, request a review immediately.

Meta’s review only references your site and how your product is marketed on the site to guide their enforcement decision. This means that you won't be able to submit additional documentation once you’ve requested a review.

You can also check your Events Manager to see how your ads are categorized: Meta Events Manager: Data Sources > Settings > Manage Data Source Categories (https://www.facebook.com/business/help/467621355878794).

How you might be affected (and what to do)

1. Core Setup Restrictions:

Meta may limit the sharing of custom parameters and parts of URLs after your domain. Learn more about core setup.  If this happens, adjust or pause campaigns as you could lose money.

2. Partial Event Restriction. No Lower-Funnel Conversion Tracking:

Meta may limit how you use mid- and lower-funnel events (e.g "Purchase"). If this happens, focus on upper-funnel events like Awareness or Engagement.

3. Full Event Restrictions:

For some brands, Meta may fully restrict all event tracking. This means Events Manager optimize your campaign. If this happens, adjust or pause campaigns as you could lose money.

How can your brand stay ahead of Meta's restrictions?

1. Review Your Brand's Classification

• Check your Events Manager to see if your website or app is flagged under a restricted category (such as health, wellness, financial services, politics, and other sensitive topics.)

  • If you're wrongly categorized, request a review immediately.

2. Clean up your website/ads claims

• Avoid exaggerated health-related claims to "cure X" or "heal Y" Keep your copy factual and focused on reviews, ingredients or outcomes.

3. [Important!] Leverage Data Compliant First-Party Data

• Create custom events to track lower-funnel events using neutral custom event names.

• Switch the lower-funnel custom conversion event to be the conversion target in your Ads Campaign.

• Plan for conversion optimization using upper-funnel standard events.

4. Monitor enforcement closely

Stay aware of policy changes, due to this niche being sensitive and highly regulated.

This notice comes courtesy of Yiqi Wu and the Aimerce team.