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Ad Policies Updates 2023: Meta, Twitter, TikTok

With the new year comes new ad policies across all major social media platforms. 2023 is shaped up to be a very interesting year in digital advertising as Meta, Twitter, and TikTok have announced new ad policies and features.

In the proliferating world that is social media marketing, the expansion of ad policies are to be expected. The adtech industry left 2022 in a rather dismal state. The ever-heightening fears and calls for user privacy protection, anything to do with new head of Twitter Elon Musk, the DOJ dishing out lawsuits among expanding government regulation on social media platforms, and threats of nationwide bans.

All things considered, the adtech industry is facing a number of challenges and uncertainties in the current climate. And it will be important for industry leaders to work together to address these concerns and to find solutions that meet the needs of both advertisers and consumers. Its enough to leave your head spinning.

But that’s why the changes to social media advertising policies are so important. They are the appropriate response to the growing recognition of the role that these platforms play in shaping public opinion and shaping our online experience. Businesses too should be familiar with ad policies in order to keep up with this fast-paced industry.

So without further ado, here are a quick rundown of new changes coming to each platform.

Meta

Creator Studio & Meta Business Suite

Meta Creator Studio is to shut down and merge with Business Suite. Once the centralized hub for small content creators to manage their Facebook pages and Instagram accounts. Creator studio offered tools to effectively post, manage, monetize and track performance of content across both platforms. Simple, intuitive, and soon to be no more.

Meta first notified users that creator tools are moving to Meta Business Suite on January 11th, 2023. For now, users are able to switch between the Creator studio and Business suite. Inciting users to become familiar with the latter, which incorporates management tools and option. Although eventually, this will no longer be an option for content creators either.

Instagram: new ad targeting options

Taking crucial steps in protecting minors online, Instagram and Facebook has introduced more limits on targeting teens with ads. As a result of new regulations, advertisers on Facebook and Instagram won’t be able to use as much personalized data to target ads to minors. This includes removing the option of targeting ads based on gender and personalized ads based on in-app activity.

The biggest change, however, is new ad control options for teens. Teenagers will have the choice to “see less” of a particular issue, which will influence the kind of adverts the platform shows them.

Variance Reduction System (VRS)

Made in collaboration with the Housing and Urban Development. The VRS is, in Meta’s own words, “to help advance the equitable distribution of ads on Meta technologies.”

The VRS focuses on a few key demographics: age, gender and estimated race or ethnicity. Using machine learning technology in the name of equitable aid delivery, the VRS assesses the overall demographic breakdown of people who have seen the advertisement to compare it to the demographic breakdown of the advertiser’s chosen eligible target audience. Notably, this includes a widely used method of measurement called Bayesian Improved Surname Geocoding (BISG) — informed by publicly available US Census statistics — to measure estimated race and ethnicity.

Twitter

Twitter loves to keep their ad polices logs short and sweet, so we will too.

Inappropriate Content: Removed specific COVID-19 restrictions.

Cause-Based Advertising: Removed, as previous restrictions on Cause-based advertisements are no longer applicable.

Trend Takeovers: UK alcohol advertisers permitted to use this product with restrictions.

Trend Takeover +: UK alcohol advertisers permitted to use this product with restrictions

TikTok

Promote advertising tool

The latest advertising tool added to TikTok’s arsenal. Promote increases the number of people who find your videos, connect them to your website, and boost the likelihood that they’ll become followers. In other words, all TikTok accounts are able to turn their videos into ads.

In addition, promote lets you track basic information on your video as a result of your Promote campaign, such as:
•  Number of your video views.
•  Number of likes, comments, and shares for your video.
•  How many people visited your website link.
•  Age and gender