On March 17, 2022, Meta updated their Facebook-ad targeting policies, a policy change that could’ve left us up the creek. 

Facebook began making aggressive changes to its detailed targeting options concerning sensitive topics like causes, organizations, or public figures related to health, race or ethnicity, political affiliation, religion, or sexual orientation. 

Most significantly, for us at Israel365 Media, Facebook banned any topics concerning religious practices and groups, political beliefs, and causes. As a media agency that represents several Israeli nonprofits and faith-based products and businesses, the changes Facebook made could’ve left us heading for the rocks. 

Despite the changes, we strongly believe that the best advertising experiences are personalized. Personalized ads help customers discover products and services offered by small businesses and allow nonprofits and organizations to reach the people most likely to support and benefit from them by connecting them to fundraisers for charitable causes they actually care about. 

Given the new limitations, how can we connect with the right people? 

Our PPC experts immediately took control and tested the waters using different marketing strategies. 

For example, with one of our partner clients, we began targeting Facebook users by applying geolocation targeting to reach Israel-supporting Christian audiences. After reviewing our data,  we identified the best-performing zip codes with populations most likely to be pro-Israel and began targeting our ads toward them. While this strategy worked relatively well, Israel365 Media always strives for better. 

I thought to myself, how can we work with Facebook’s limitations and maximize our reach? 

That’s when it hit me. If Facebook is trying to broaden its targeting options, we should too. Don’t work against the wave = flow with it! Instead of trying to find our audience by working around Facebook’s algorithms, we threw the geolocation targeting overboard and broadened our targeting to focus on users who expressed a general interest in Israel, including a wide range of age groups. This time, we worked with the algorithm rather than around it, giving it a lot more to work with! 

The best part is that we immediately saw an increase in results! With an 88% improvement in transactions and 126% growth in revenue, our PPC experts now know that when Facebook changes, so do we!

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