Hey, remember how a couple of months back, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was like “soon, we’re going to fully automate all advertising, you just give us you’re URL and we’ll do the rest”?
Yeah, Meta’s already well on its way towards this, through its ever-improving AI targeting and bidding tools, as well as its generative AI creative and re-formatting options.
And it’s also going to force you into this new reality, whether you like it or not.
Early last year, for example, Meta announced the removal and/or consolidation of a range of its detailed ad targeting options in order to reduce manual targeting, which it says often restricts ad performance.
Meta explained at the time that it was removing certain targeting criteria because they weren’t widely used, they were too granular, or they related to topics that “people may perceive as sensitive.”
But this is also another step in Meta’s push towards broader targeting options, which it expanded further in August last year, and June this year as well, by announcing the exclusion of more detailed targeting options.
And now, it’s taking the next steps, with a new notification in Meta Ads Manager alerting advertisers of the removal/consolidation of more detailed targeting options.
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That’ll further slim down your options for honing in on your target audience through manual targeting selections, with part of the impetus then being that by allowing broader targeting, you’ll then enable Meta’s improving targeting systems to find the right viewers for your promotions, without being limited by such.
Which most ad buyers are now shifting towards, as broader targeting is driving better results.
As explained by Meta ads expert Jon Loomer:
“I generally recommend deprioritizing interests and behaviors anyway. The belief that Meta needs these inputs is a targeting myth.”
Loomer covers this in more detail on his blog, but in essence, Loomer says that Meta’s evolving automated ad targeting process is likely to drive better performance for your ads than your own manual targeting, so you should trust Meta’s system to find the right audience for your promotions, even if you’re confident that you know these specifics.
I mean, maybe, in some cases, there would be a case for more specific, custom targeting criteria, but again, Meta’s systems are getting better and better at showing ads to the right people, at the right time, across its apps.
Indeed, in Meta’s recent Q2 earnings update, CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained that:
“On advertising, the strong performance this quarter is largely thanks to AI unlocking greater efficiency and gains across our ads system. This quarter, we expanded our new AI-powered recommendation model for ads to new surfaces and improved its performance by using more signals and a longer context. It’s driven roughly 5% more ad conversions on Instagram and 3% on Facebook.”
Meta also says that, in its testing, the median cost per conversion for ad campaigns improved by 22.6% when detailed targeting exclusions were removed.
So Meta’s getting better at finding the right audience for each ad, based on its own systematic understanding, and as such, leaving your targeting more broad can actually help to improve your results.
And eventually, you won’t even need to input your targeting at all, with Meta aiming to automate this entirely, based on its understanding of your Page audience, your product, and the details listed on your site.
It might feel like putting too much trust in AI for such purpose, but it does make sense that AI systems would be better understanding these signals than a human, and it may well be worth experimenting with more broad options, as well as Meta’s Advantage+ tools, ahead of your holiday push.
These latest consolidations will take effect from January 15th 2026, meaning that any ad sets you have running that use these targeting options will stop delivering from that date.
You can learn more about the specific exclusions/consolidations in Ads Manager.
