Brandon Barelmann
ACCOUNT MANAGER

First, they take away our behavior targeting, and now they’re taking away even more!

Or are they?

Tuesday, Facebook Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandberg announced that Facebook would be eliminating age, gender, zip code targeting options for companies that run real estate, credit, and employment ads.

"These changes are the result of historic settlement agreements with leading civil rights organizations and ongoing input from civil rights experts," Sandberg explains in her press release.

This change comes as a result of a lawsuit filed by the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and the Communication Workers of America (CWA) in September of 2018. Facebook is also ordered to pay less than $5 million in damages.

Of course, these targeting categories also extend to the Facebook family of apps such as Instagram and Messenger, as well as the Facebook Audience Network.

So what does that mean for builders?

In short, it shouldn’t mean much.

Our industry has seen these regulatory standards since the Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968. This is just a digital application of those standards.

The Facebook ad platform is universal, whether you advertise for makeup or real estate.

Ever since the response to the Cambridge Analytica episode last year, our industry has worked hard to honed its targeting skills. Before it was easy. We'd just select the “likely to move” category and a few others, and you’d probably see good results.

But since those behavioral targeting categories disappeared, it hasn’t been that easy. But if your Facebook audiences are built that way, then that could be a sign of a more significant issue: your marketing is incomplete.

Even though Facebook is throwing many of these basic targeting categories away for real estate, it’s not getting rid of custom audiences, lookalike audiences, the Facebook Pixel or the granddaddy of them all: the Facebook AI. Those tools are much more powerful than the “likely to move” category we enjoyed in 2017.

The remedy to this change is simple (and it hasn’t changed in some time): Create relevant content for your audience, provide a frictionless experience on all your digital outlets and model homes, and give your marketing team the infrastructure to capture these leads and buyers (via a CRM) so our email list and social media audiences get better and better.

If that doesn’t sound so simple, we get it. There’s a lot that goes into the digital marketing puzzle. The digital rules can change at the drop of a hat, and it can seem like a full-time job just staying current on all of it. But here at BD, it’s what we do. So if you need help with your social media content or help providing a frictionless web experience, let us know!