About special ad audiences

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

As part of our settlement agreement with the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, special ad audiences, a tool that lets you expand your audience for ad sets related to housing, employment and credit, will no longer be available for use by the end of 2022.

Below is the timeline of the availability of special ad audiences:

1. August 25, 2022: you will no longer be able to create new special ad audiences.
2. September 13, 2022: special ad audiences will no longer be available for use in new ad creation via the API.
3. October 12, 2022: Special ad audiences will no longer be available for use in new ad creation across Ads Manager and the API. After this date, affected ad sets may be paused for delivery. To resume delivery of the paused ad sets you will need to update them to remove special ad audiences. As an alternative, we recommend exploring broader targeting options.

A special ad audience is similar to a lookalike audience because it uses online behaviour similarities from the people in your source to form a new audience. However, a special ad audience is adjusted to comply with the audience selection restrictions associated with your campaign's chosen special ad category. It won’t use targeting information such as age and gender, or certain demographics, behaviours or interests.

Note: Remember, your campaigns must comply with Meta’s discriminatory practices policy.

• Create a special ad audience

• About audiences for special ad categories