About audiences for credit, employment or housing campaigns

We will temporarily stop showing ads to teens in the EU, the EEA and Switzerland as we continue to evaluate the impact of EU regulation. During this temporary pause in ads delivery, businesses can continue to connect with teens organically on Facebook and Instagram. We'll share more details in the coming months about how the EU teen ad experience may change. Advertisers running campaigns targeting teens don't need to take any action, but you may want to review your campaign setup in light of these changes. Our ads system will automatically stop delivery of ads to teens starting from the week of 6 November 2023.

Changes driven by ongoing efforts to align our products with evolving privacy rules in Europe may affect campaigns advertising to people in the European region. Learn more about how European privacy directives may affect your ads and reporting.

Starting from 25 August 2022, you will no longer be able to create new Special ad audiences. For more information, please view About special ad audiences.

Special ad category campaigns for credit, employment or housing opportunity ads have limited or unavailable targeting options that you can use to define the audience that you want your ads to reach.

To create an audience compatible with special ad category campaign restrictions, you need to declare your credit, employment or housing opportunity campaign in Special ad categories.

If you use a saved audience, it will be updated to comply with credit, employment or housing special ad category targeting restrictions.

To create a new audience for your campaign:

1. Go to Meta Ads Manager and create or open an existing campaign.
2. Go to your ad set, then the Audience section.
3. Create a new custom audience or select special ad audience to reach new people.

You can use the available ad targeting criteria to refine your audience after you've chosen your audience type. The options that you choose must not discriminate against people based on certain personal characteristics as defined by Meta's Discriminatory Practices policy.

Note: A special ad audience uses existing information that you have about the people you want to reach to create a new audience with similar online behaviour. It's like lookalike Audiences, but adjusted to comply with the audience selection restrictions associated with your campaign's chosen special ad category and our Advertising Standards.

Restrictions may depend on what country you're in and whether you want your ads to reach people in other countries. This applies to individual and multiple ad accounts.

Age, gender, or postal code, exclusion targeting, Lookalike Audiences, saved audiences and some interests are limited or unavailable for the following advertiser locations:

• Advertisers based in the US or US territories
• Advertisers targeting their ads to audiences in the US or US territories, Canada and certain European countries and territories

Limited or unavailable targeting options

Location

You can target your ads to people by geographic location (such as country, region, state, county, city, town or ward, but not by postal code. You also can't exclude locations.

Specific audiences based on a town/city, address or pin-drop locations will include an expanded radius. For example, if you want to reach people in the US who live in the city of Seattle, your audience will also include people within a 15-mile radius of Seattle's city centre.

Countries where a 15-mile (25-kilometre) radius is required for specific audience locations

Canada, United States

Countries where a 10-mile (16-kilometre) radius is required for specific audience locations

Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canary Islands, all Channel Islands (Guernsey), all Channel Islands (Jersey), Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, French Guiana, Germany, Greece, Guadeloupe, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Martinique, Mayotte, Monaco, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Réunion, Romania, Saint-Martin, San Marino, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, UK sovereign bases in Cyprus (Akrotiri and Dhekeli), Vatican City

Age

Options are generally fixed to include ages 18 to 65+ for housing, employment and credit ads. However, advertisers running credit ads in Europe can select a different age range in order to meet their industry and local requirements for this special ad category.

Gender

Audiences must include all genders. You can't edit this option.

Detailed targeting and audience exclusion

Some demographic, behaviour and interest options are unavailable. Excluding any detailed targeting selections is also unavailable.

Audience expansion

The use of Meta Advantage detailed targeting (previously known as detailed targeting expansion) or lookalike expansion options are unavailable.

Note: Certain targeting options such as special ad audiences and custom audiences may only be available via Meta Ads Manager.

• Create a special ad audience
• About audiences