Special Ad Categories

All businesses using the Marketing API must identify whether or not new and edited campaigns belong to a Special Ad Category. Current available categories are: housing, employment, credit, or issues, elections, and politics. Businesses whose ads do not belong to a Special Ad Category must indicate NONE or send an empty array in the special_ad_categories field.

Note: When any special_ad_categories are selected, you must also set a special_ad_category_country.

Businesses running housing, employment, or credit ads must comply with audience restrictions. Audience options for ads about social issues, elections or politics are not affected by the special_ad_categories label.

Ad Campaign Offerings

All advertisers are required to specify special ad categories in their advertising campaign creations. The special ad category field can contain one or more of the following:

• HOUSING
• CREDIT or FINANCIAL_PRODUCTS_SERVICES
• EMPLOYMENT
• ISSUES_ELECTIONS_POLITICS
• NONE

Even if the campaign does not contain ads that include market housing, employment, credit, or issues, elections, and politics, advertisers must still specify a category by choosing NONE or sending us an empty array.

If selecting housing, employment, or credit, the set of targeting options available for ads in these campaigns will be restricted.

If selecting issues, elections, or politics, you will be asked to select the country in which you want to run these ads. You are required to be authorized to run ads about social issues, elections, or politics in the specified country.

All campaign creations require the special_ad_categories field. If your campaign does not need a special ad category, you can pass in an empty array or use NONE as the value.

Example Request

curl -X POST \
  -F 'name="My special category campaign"' \
  -F 'objective="LINK_CLICKS"' \
  -F 'status="PAUSED"' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  -F 'special_ad_categories="[\'EMPLOYMENT\']"'\
  https://graph.facebook.com/v21.0/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/campaigns

Learn more about Special Ad Categories, Ads Help Center.

The ISSUES_ELECTIONS_POLITICS Option

Advertisers running ads about social issues, elections, and politics need to specify special_ad_categories when creating an ad campaign. In addition, they also have to set the authorization_category flag at the ad creative level: use POLITICAL for political ads, and beginning January 9, 2024, use POLITICAL_WITH_DIGITALLY_CREATED_MEDIA for ads containing media that is digitally created or altered.

You can create entire campaigns with ads about issues, elections, and politics, instead of individual ads displaying this type of content. Inside a single ad campaign, you can no longer mix ads about issues, elections, and politics with ads not related to these topics. In addition, you can no longer mark individual ads as belonging to issues, elections, and politics.

To create an issue, elections, or politics campaign, pass ISSUES_ELECTIONS_POLITICS inside the special_ad_categories field. Advertisers are allowed to combine this category with others by passing multiple values into the field.

When any special_ad_categories are selected, you must also set a special_ad_category_country. This is the country you want to run ads about social issues, elections, or politics. The special_ads_category_country:

• should be an array of ISO Alpha 2 country codes.
• needs to be a country that the user and Page is authorized in.

To run issue, elections, or politics campaigns:

• Advertisers must be authorized in the country they want to run ads in.
• The ad account must be eligible to run issue, electoral, or political ads for this Page.

To create an issue, elections, or politics campaign:

curl -X POST \
-F 'name="My special category campaign"' \
-F 'objective="LINK_CLICKS"' \
-F 'status="PAUSED"' \
-F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
-F 'special_ad_categories="[\'ISSUES_ELECTIONS_POLITICS\']" '\
-F 'special_ad_category_country="[\'US\']" '\
https://graph.facebook.com/v21.0/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/campaigns

To create a campaign with multiple categories:

curl -X POST \
-F 'name="My special category campaign"' \
-F 'objective="LINK_CLICKS"' \
-F 'status="PAUSED"' \
-F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
-F 'special_ad_categories="[\'EMPLOYMENT\', \'ISSUES_ELECTIONS_POLITICS\']" '\
-F 'special_ad_category_country="[\'US\']" '\
https://graph.facebook.com/v21.0/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/campaigns

Transition Current Campaigns

All current campaigns are assigned a default of NONE to special_ad_category. If you run ads in a Special Ad Category, you need to update as follows:

1. Re-create your campaign and specify special_ad_category. See Create a new campaign for details.

2. Update your targeting settings and change your special_ad_category:

• You must update your targeting settings to comply with Special Ad Category restrictions. You can do this manually, using our usual targeting end points. Or, you can specify tune_for_category at the ad set level. When you use tune_for_category, you are immediately compliant with the new restrictions:

curl -i -X POST \
  -F 'tune_for_category=EMPLOYMENT'
  https://graph.facebook.com/v21.0/<ADSET_ID>  

• After the targeting is updated, request a change in your special_ad_category with a POST request to /<AD_CAMPAIGN_ID>. Include your category information:

curl -i -X POST \
  https://graph.facebook.com/v21.0/<AD_CAMPAIGN_ID>?special_ad_category=EMPLOYMENT  

Tune for Category

When you use tune_for_category, the result for your ad campaign and ad sets is as follows:

For Audiences

For Targeting

Create a New Campaign

To create an Ad Campaign with a special_ad_category, follow the standard campaign creation flow and add special_ad_category. Here is an example:

curl -X POST \
  -F 'name="My special category campaign"' \
  -F 'objective="LINK_CLICKS"' \
  -F 'status="PAUSED"' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  -F 'special_ad_category=EMPLOYMENT' \
  https://graph.facebook.com/v21.0/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/campaigns
	

To create a campaign with NONE as special_ad_category:

curl -X POST \
  -F 'name="My campaign"' \
  -F 'objective="LINK_CLICKS"' \
  -F 'status="PAUSED"' \
  -F 'access_token=<ACCESS_TOKEN>' \
  -F 'special_ad_category=NONE' \
  https://graph.facebook.com/v21.0/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/campaigns

See the [Campaign reference](/docs/marketing-api/reference/ad-campaign-group) for more infomation.

Housing, Employment, and Credit

Advertisers running ads about housing, employment and credit need to specify special_ad_categories while creating an ad campaign. When special_ad_categories are selected, you should also set a special_ad_category_country. The special_ad_category_country for housing, employment, and credit ads:

• will default to your listed tax country, if it is not set.
• does not need to be a country that the user and Page is authorized in.

Special Ad Categories for Credit, Employment, and Housing Ads in Europe

If you want to target Europe and run ads related to credit, employment, or housing opportunities, you will be required to declare the relevant Special Ad Categories. Ads that fall into special ad categories have a smaller set of available targeting categories.

Ad Set and Ad Level Changes

Advertisers running housing, employment, and credit ads, who are based in the US or running ads targeted to the US, Canada, or Europe have the following limitations on the ad set and ad levels:

• Advantage+ catalog ads using Home Listing Catalogs must adhere to Special Ad Category restrictions. When creating an ad campaign, these advertisers should specify HOUSING under special_ad_category.

Targeting and Audience Changes

Advertisers offering housing, employment and credit opportunities, who are based in the United States or running ads targeted to the United States, Canada, or Europe have a limited set of targeting options to choose from. For example, targeting options describing or appearing to relate to protected classes which may include demographics, behaviors or interests, are unavailable.

These are the restrictions:

Age

Options are generally fixed to include ages 18 through 65+ for housing, employment and credit ads. However, advertisers running credit ads in Europe can select a different age range in order to meet their industry and local requirements for this Special Ad Category.

Gender

Specific gender cannot be targeted. You have two options:

1. Recommended: Do not specify genders parameters.
2. Set genders to default values: genders defaults to all genders.

Location Targeting

• Location exclusion is not supported.
• Location selection must include all areas equal or larger than 15 mile or 25 kilometer radius for the US and Canada, and 15 kilometer radius for Europe of any selected city, address or dropped pin.
• The following location categories are not supported:
  • subcity
  • neighborhood
  • metro_area
  • small_geo_area
  • subneighborhood
  • electoral_district
  • zips

Detailed Targeting

• The following Interest Targeting options are not permitted:
  • Behavior and Demographic targeting
  • Interest exclusion
  • Excluding detailed targeting selections
• Supported targeting interests have to be part of a previously approved list. You will be able to search this list in the future with our Targeting Search.
• Interest Expansion is disabled.

Lookalike Audiences

Unavailable. To reach new people, create a Special Ad Audience.

Special Ad Audiences

Advertisers running housing, employment and credit ads do not have access to Lookalike Audiences. Instead they can create a Special Ad Audiences which will have more restrictions in terms of the factors that will be considered.

Create a Special Ad Audience

Create a new audience with a POST request to /act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/customaudiences. subtype should be set to REGULATED_CATEGORIES_AUDIENCE.

curl -X POST \
  -F 'origin_audience_id=<SEED_AUDIENCE_ID>' \
  -F 'subtype=REGULATED_CATEGORIES_AUDIENCE'
  -F 'regulated_audience_spec={"country": "US", "ratio": 0.1}' \
  https://graph.facebook.com/<API_VERSION>/act_<AD_ACCOUNT_ID>/customaudiences

Load your Special Ad Audience with a GET request. Specify the information you want under fields:

curl -X GET \
  -d 'fields=regulated_audience_spec'
  https://graph.facebook.com/<API_VERSION>/<AUDIENCE_ID>

Your results look like this:

"regulated_audience_spec": {
  "country": "US",
  "origin": [
    {
      "id": "<SEED_AUDIENCE_ID>",
      "name": "My Seed Audience",
      "type": "custom_audience"
    }
  ],
  "ratio": 0.05,
  "type": "custom_ratio",
  "target_country_names": [
    "United States"
  ]
}

Troubleshoot

A campaign, ad set, or ad can be set to WITH_ISSUES, if it can't be delivered for any reason. When reading an object, you can dig into WITH_ISSUES to troubleshoot any problems with that object.

A call to an object with "effective_status": "WITH_ISSUES" returns a field called issues_info, with information related to the issues found. While working with Special Ad Category, you may see the following issues:

For help reading warnings and errors see our developer blog post about the subject.

Milestones

Since December 4, 2019, businesses located in the US or targeting users in the US are required to identify new and edited ad campaigns that offer housing, employment, or credit opportunities, or their ads are not allowed to run. Since this date, businesses located in the US or targeting users in the US must specify a special_ad_category for new and edited campaigns and use the limited audience criteria available for such campaigns. This applies across all ad buying surfaces, including the Marketing API.

February 11, 2020 is the milestone for active ads offering housing, employment, or credit opportunities.

Since March 31, 2020, all new and edited ads using the Marketing API, including all businesses that do not offer housing, employment or credit opportunities, which must specify NONE under special_ad_category.

Starting December 3, 2020, advertisers targeting Canada and running ads related to credit, employment, or housing opportunities are required to declare the relevant Special Ad Categories.

Starting December 7, 2021, advertisers targeting Europe and running ads related to credit, employment, or housing opportunities are required to declare the relevant Special Ad Categories.

Enforcing

In addition to requiring advertisers to self-identify their campaign category, we continue using human reviewers and machine-learning to identify these kinds of ads. If you send us an incorrect special_ad_category, there is a risk your ads will be paused until the campaign is adjusted.

If you select HOUSING, EMPLOYMENT, or CREDIT as special_ad_category, all targeting restrictions will be enforced with a hard error.

Context

Facebook is committed to protecting people from discrimination, and we are continually improving our ability to detect and deter potential abuse. It’s against our policies to discriminate by wrongfully targeting or excluding specific groups of people.

As part of a historic settlement agreement, we made changes to the way we manage housing, employment, and credit ads. Special Ad Categories were created to support that commitment. Advertisers offering housing, employment, or credit ads have limited targeting and audience selections.

See Also

• Choosing a Special Ad Category, Ads Help Center
• About Audiences for Special Ad Categories, Ads Help Center
• News for Developers: Troubleshoot Ad Delivery with WITH_ISSUES Status
• Targeting Documentation
• Advanced Targeting and Placement
• Targeting Search
• Facebook Advertising Policies
• Newsroom: A Second Update on Our Civil Rights Audit