Facebook implemented two changes involving special ad categories for advertisers using Marketing API (application-programming interface) version 7.0 and above.
Ads about social issues, elections or politics must now be categorized as special ad categories at the campaign level, rather than at the ad level.
Software development engineer Charles Vidrine said in a blog post, “By moving this important classification upfront to the campaign level, it allows its effects to trickle down to the ad set and ad levels. With this change, advertisers will label all their ads in a campaign as about social issues, elections or politics.”
Advertisers must also specify the country where they want to run social issues, elections or politics campaigns.
Campaigns can now also be categorized in multiple special ad categories, giving advertisers more flexibility.
They can select any combination of four special ad categories for their campaigns: housing, employment, credit, social issues, elections or politics.
Vidrine cautioned that since these updates are not available in Marketing API version 6.0 and older, there may be discrepancies for a small set of use cases for campaigns designated as social issues, elections or politics via Ads Manager: Those designations cannot be removed using older versions of the Marketing API, and this must be done in Ads Manager or version 7.0 of the API.
He wrote, “These changes continue Facebook’s efforts to increase ad transparency and election integrity on Facebook and Instagram. They also help simplify the process of managing special ad categories on our platform.”
