Will Privacy Changes Affect Meta Ads? The Future of Data

The digital advertising landscape is in the middle of a transformation. As privacy concerns take centre stage, the future of Meta Ads is a little uncertain.

With shifts like Apple’s App Tracking Transparency and evolving global data protection laws, businesses are left wondering how these changes will impact their ability to effectively reach and engage consumers. Will personalised ads become a thing of the past? Or will advertisers find innovative ways to navigate this new era of privacy-first marketing?

In this post, we explore four areas where privacy changes might affect Meta Ads — and how advertisers can adapt.

Tracking and Data Collection

Privacy laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), along with Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) feature, are limiting the ways user data is collected across apps and websites.

It means that advertisers are now manually feeding Meta more first-party data, or data we can collect directly from customers. This includes email subscribers, submitters of website forms, or members of loyalty programs. This is increasingly being used to find new audiences who share similar characteristics to engaged customers.

A tip: set up Facebook’s Conversions API, which allows you to send web events directly from your server to Meta (bypassing certain tracking limitations for more accurate conversion data).

Audience Segments

Meta no longer offers as many detailed targeting options, particularly where ‘sensitive’ categories such as health, race, political views, or religious beliefs are concerned. In Australia, you also can’t target users based on income anymore.

Additionally, iOS updates requiring users to opt into tracking have further limited data collection, leaving advertisers with fewer insights into user behaviour outside of Meta’s platforms.

This leads us into a discussion on broad targeting (see below).

Ad Personalisation

As we look to the future, advertisers will need to rethink how to target their audiences in a world where insights into users' browsing habits and previous interactions have been limited.

To adapt, many Meta experts are advising marketers to pivot to Broad Targeting instead of hyper-targeted campaigns, keeping audience parameters more generalised. This means content needs to be broader, too. It’s now important for ad creatives to appeal to a wide range of audiences rather than being tailored too specifically to user behaviour.

This involves focusing on universally appealing messages, such as value propositions or pain points that resonate with larger segments of your target demographic.

Retargeting Campaigns

With less user data available, retargeting ads may also lose some of their effectiveness. For instance, without accurate tracking of who has visited your website or engaged with previous ads, the opportunity to target users with personalised follow-up ads is diminished.

At the moment, we’re still finding success with custom audiences; but this might not be the case in the not-so-distant future. For e-commerce businesses, Dynamic Ads will become more important. While they rely on data to show personalised product recommendations, you can use first-party data (e.g. customer email lists or product views) to ensure relevant products are shown to users.

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As restrictions on data mining tighten, advertisers need to refine their strategies accordingly. By focusing on first-party data, broadening targeting options, and generalising content, businesses can continue to run effective and compliant ad campaigns in a more privacy-conscious digital landscape.