Facebook is constantly making changes to its platform—and that’s good news for marketers.

The social media giant is always looking for new ways to help businesses connect with audiences, and they’re eager to help you reach your target market in the most effective way possible. But while these changes can be exciting, they can also be frustrating. With so many updates coming out so quickly, it’s hard to keep up with what’s happening and make sure you’re optimizing your campaigns.

Here’s the good news: We’ve compiled all of the latest updates in one place so you can stay on top of what’s working right now and avoid pitfalls that might come up later down the line.

Whether you’re trying to get more engagement or boost conversions (or both!), keep scrolling to learn more about the latest and greatest Facebook advertising updates that could be affecting your campaigns. 

Community Chats Feature 

Facebook just launched a new feature that’s going to make Messenger even more robust, in hopes that users will spend more time in-app.

The social media giant has begun rolling out community chats, making Messenger more like Slack or Discord. Community chats are private group chats where users can create new real-time chat, voice, and video channels directly from the Messenger app. The channels don’t require any additional apps or downloads; they’re built right into the Messenger experience.

More B2B Targeting Options

Facebook’s new targeting options are here to improve your B2B marketing via on-platform job titles and interests. 

New segmentation options include:

• IT decision-makers: Target ads based on job titles.
• Business decision-maker titles and interests: Uses job titles and interests to target decision-makers.
• Business decision-makers: Uses job titles and industries to target decision-makers.
• New active business: New segments allow you to target businesses created in the last 6, 12, or 24 months.

Live Shopping is No More

Facebook announced their Live Shopping feature is no longer available. The company is shifting even more focus to Reels. 

You can still use Facebook Live to broadcast live events, but you won’t be able to tag products or create product playlists in Live broadcasts. 

Recurring Notifications on Messenger

Facebook is making it easier for businesses to build loyalty and trust with their customers.

With the launch of recurring notifications on Messenger, businesses can now deliver tailored messaging at the best time for customers. Businesses can choose the topics in which they’d like people to opt in, how often customers can hear from them, and shape their content—all so they’re always reaching out when their customers need them most.

Optimize Text Per Person Feature

Facebook is known for its ability to predict what you want to see on the platform and serve it up to you before you even realize that you want it. With the Optimize Text Per Person feature, Facebook is now able to predict which ads will be most appealing based on an algorithm that takes into account users’ past interactions with similar content.

Facebook’s machine learning technology shows users different combinations of text in order to learn which ones they respond best to—then it uses that information to tweak your ad copy and maximize engagement.

No More “Targeting by Teens” in Interests

It’s official: advertisers can no longer target teenagers based on their interests and online activity.

This is a big change for companies that have relied on the targeting options of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media platforms for years. Up until now, brands have been able to target ads toward teenagers just like they would any other age demographic. 

Now, interest and activity-based targeting options can only be applied to users over the age of 18 globally.

Reach New App Users with Automated App Ads

Automated App Ads are here to save you time and money.

Just set your targeting, budget, and frequency cap, and they’ll take care of the rest—including reaching the right audience for your app. You can even set up your campaign to run on a recurring basis and/or pause it whenever you want.

Facebook’s Automated App Ads feature is great for people who want to boost their visibility on mobile app stores and make it easier to get new users, but there are also some drawbacks you should be aware of before diving in. 

The feature doesn’t support certain features like targeting based on age, gender, demographics, interests, etc. It only supports targeting by country, language, and operating system. This means you can’t use your automated ads to target specific groups of people or specific devices—you can only target those who live in a particular country and speak a specific language. You also can’t use this feature with other ad types like playable ads (no games), carousel ads (no slideshows), or Instant Experience ads (no way to communicate with users in real-time).

Yeah, it’s a bummer—but don’t worry. There are still plenty of ways to reach your audience with Facebook ads. If you want to target individual people in specific countries, rather than just all users who speak a particular language, we recommend using Custom Audiences or lookalike audiences. 

Meta Advantage Suite for Ads

Meta Advantage Suite for ads is a new set of products that will allow you to automate aspects of campaigns you previously had to set up manually, like detailed targeting options.

Meta Advantage Suite consists of two groups of products: Advantage and Advantage+. These products will allow you to streamline your campaign setup process by automating the placement choice and allowing for full automation through the entire campaign setup process.

Some of our favorite new features include:

Lookalikes (currently known as Lookalike Expansion) and Detailed Targeting Expansion are new features that allow you to reach broader sets of people outside of the initial set targeting settings to find high-converting users. So you can spend less time trying to figure out how to expand your audience and more time focusing on what’s important: selling.

Advantage+ App Campaigns (Automated App Ads) are also new, and they allow you to automatically serve ads on mobile apps that are integrated with the Ad Manager platform. Advantage+ Placements (known as Automatic Placements) are also in beta testing, and they allow you to automatically place ads on websites that have been integrated with the Ad Manager platform.

Advantage+ Creative (Dynamic Experiences) allows you to create dynamic experiences for display ads by enhancing and optimizing your ad creative to improve performance. Facebook can help advertisers adjust the aspect ratio of their image or video, apply a template to their image to help it better fit certain ad placements, and display relevant comments below ads.

Finally, Facebook rolled out its new Advantage+ shopping campaigns on August 15 (Automated Shopping Ads). These automated campaigns allow advertisers to eliminate the manual ad creation process and create and split-test up to 150 creative options at once. This means advertisers can create profitable campaigns that convert faster, which is a pretty major improvement for advertisers who have struggled with creating their own ads. 

Facebook’s Platform Changes are a Big Deal

Facebook is an advertising powerhouse, and its platform changes will affect your marketing strategies in a big way. The connectivity it provides can be a great asset to your business’ success–but only if you use it right.

If you’re looking to get started with Facebook advertising, or if you want to take your current campaign to the next level, our experts are happy to help. We know how to make the most out of Facebook’s platform updates, and we can connect your brand with your customers in new and exciting ways. Contact us today and let’s chat about how we can help your business succeed.