Calling all agents! How to navigate the tough new world of Facebook advertising in the property sector

In December last year, Facebook introduced the ‘Special Ad Category: Housing’ update aimed specifically at the property sector. 

“The rules were pretty clear: if you’re promoting a housing opportunity, you need to declare the advert as ‘Special Ad Category: Housing’ to prevent discrimination,” said Rady. 

“For the first 6 months or so, any advert that listed keywords such as house, property, landlord, rental, estate agent was flagged by the algorithm and ‘rejected’ if it wasn’t listed as Special Ad Category - even if it wasn’t promoting a housing opportunity. This was a pain for most, but you could always jump onto Facebook Live Chat support, explain your case and 9 times out of 10, they would approve the adverts. Over the last few months, however, Facebook has made further updates to the algorithm and made the rules even more restrictive.”  

Affects targeting options 

Facebook’s new rules for declaring ads under Special Ad Category state: 

“Housing: Ads that promote or directly link to a housing opportunity or related service, including but not limited to listings for the sale or rental of a home or apartment, homeowners’ insurance, mortgage insurance, mortgage loans, housing repairs and home equity or appraisal services. This does not include ads designed to educate consumers or housing providers about their rights and responsibilities under fair housing laws.” 

Rady continued: “The reason we as a marketing agency were so reluctant to use the Special Ad Category in the beginning is, it significantly affects your targeting options. To limit discrimination, once you declare ‘Special Ad Category: Housing’, you cannot touch the age range (default setting to 18-65+), you cannot add any detailed targeting options or exclusions (meaning you cannot fine tune your target audience), and possibly the worst option, you must target at least a 10 mile radius. For agents who cover a small patch in London for example, this can be a real issue.” 

And her webinar co-host, Paul Long, added: “The algorithm has also become stricter, and the rules have been updated to include mortgages and appraisal services, so there is no avoiding the Special Ad Category now. In fact, we have experienced issues of completely compliant ad accounts being disabled, Business Manager accounts being restricted and more worryingly, Business Pages being permanently banned from advertising. 

“Our advice to anyone using Facebook ads for their business in the property sector is to follow all the rules to a tee. If you’re running any property ads whatsoever, declare them as Special Ad Category. 

“And if you cover only a small patch and are concerned about the 10 mile minimum radius, we advise you mention the target area at every opportunity in the advert - in the caption, the description and on the actual ad image/video. Call out to the people you’re targeting, and the algorithm should do the rest. 

“We hope that anyone affected by the new update will join us on the webinar. We’ll be giving a range of tips to get the best out of Facebook advertising under the new rules. 

The ValPal Network webinar on Facebook updates is on Wednesday 12 October at 1pm. Sign up details can be found via this link: https://bit.ly/facebookupdateswebinar.