NEW Facebook Ad Policy to Effect Real Estate Agents

In a nutshell:

One of Facebook's top priorities is to protect people from discrimination on Facebook

Current Ad policy has already removed thousands of categories from targeting related to protected classes such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and religion.

Anyone who wants to run housing, employment or credit ads will no longer be allowed to target by age, gender or postcode code.

What the heck does this mean?

Before this announcement, I would not usually target my property listing ads by postcode or gender – but I did by age.

For example: if the property for sale qualified for the First Home Owners Grant, I would target my Facebook ads to buyers between the ages of 25 & 45 as these people are more likely to be interested in the First Home Owners Grant compared to someone who was 60 years old.

This new ad policy may not allow me to do this anymore.

The solution:

As marketers, we need to be flexible and adaptable to change at a moments notice.

If you are advertising your listings of Facebook, I suggest you take the following steps moving forward:

1. Have a more targeted approach with your ad messaging (i.e. what text you write on the Facebook ad or sponsored post – making sure you directly talk to your ideal buyer.)

2. Use Facebook's Look-a-like audiences to help show your ads to your ideal buyers – without having to select these now discontinued targeting features.