Meta Ads Targeting Has Changed: What Small Businesses Need to Know (2025 Update)
In our last blog, “How to Beat the Summer Slump: Marketing Tips Social Media Edition”, we talked about how this is the time of year a lot of updates change within your social apps and platforms.
Well, 2025 is no different — Meta just gave its ad platform an AI-powered facelift, especially around detailed targeting. And yes, this affects businesses of every size.
And if you are a monger in all these Facebook/Instagram ads – there is no need to panic.
Let’s chat further about what those changes are, why they are happening, and more importantly, how you can adapt like a seasoned marketer.
So, What Actually Changed in Meta Ads Targeting?
If you’ve been running Meta ads for a while, you may have already noticed some things feel… different. Or maybe nothing seems off yet.
Either way, let’s break down exactly what’s new in Meta’s ad targeting so you can stay ahead of the curve:
Reduction and exclusion in detailed targeting options
Detailed targeting is a list of categories or behaviours that you can choose from to tell your ad to seek out people that match a certain criterion.
For example, you might target parents who are interested in New Year’s resolutions — perfect for an ad promoting weight loss support during a season when people are more likely to take up a new sport or fitness goal.
But as of 2025, Meta has merged or phased out many of these interest-based targeting options — especially those related to sensitive topics like health, financial status, and relationship status.
More AI-lead targeting expansion (Advantage+ audiences)
Meta has long used machine learning to improve ad performance — but with this latest update, they’re now actively pushing advertisers toward AI-powered targeting through Advantage+ Audiences.
This feature uses AI to identify and target users who are most likely to take action based on your campaign goals. It does this by learning from your past ad performance, audience behavior, and conversion history, then optimizing delivery automatically.
What does this mean for you?
It’s now smarter to keep your targeting relatively broad and allow Meta’s AI to do the heavy lifting.
However, if you try to get too niche with your audience selection, the algorithm has to work harder — which can drive up your cost per click (CPC). Narrow targeting now often results in higher costs and lower performance, because it restricts the AI’s ability to optimize effectively.
Secondly, Why did meta make these changes?
These changes might feel drastic — especially if you’ve noticed a shift in ad performance or if your usual tactics no longer work.
But there’s a clear strategic direction behind Meta’s move:
Privacy Compliance (GDPR & Evolving U.S. Laws)
One major reason is to ensure compliance with global privacy regulations, like GDPR in the EU and similar laws developing in the U.S. These laws limit how companies can use sensitive user data, particularly around health, finances, and personal identifiers.
Improving AI & Machine Learning Efficiency
Meta is doubling down on machine learning — a form of AI that uses data to improve over time. By removing manual targeting complexities, the algorithm has more flexibility to learn and optimize for results more effectively.
Simplifying Campaign Setup
By phasing out overly detailed interest selections, Meta is encouraging advertisers to focus less on micro-targeting and more on conversion-based behavior. The goal: simplify ad setup, reduce decision fatigue, and let AI take care of audience matching.
What does that mean for small businesses?
It means that the old way of stacking interests when it comes to you choosing your detailed targeting is out.
It’s not wise to extremely narrow your audience, causing a higher charge on your CPC and making Meta’s AI work even harder to find your audience with so many restrictions.
But while the game has changed, here is what matters to you:
Adapting to Meta’s change in detail targeting audience, by making sure your content is on point.
how can you adapt in 2025?
Use the advantage+, but give it direction
Meaning, instead of telling Meta the exact person you are looking for, use broad interests to give AI context. While allowing its machine learning capabilities to roam and explore new possibilities.
This allows the platform room to understand what people are ready to convert and when – whilst also observing behaviour to adapt your approach to the right people.
Put more focus on your content
Your ad copy and image are going to now drive your success.
Of course, we want you audience to stop their scrolling and stay a bit longer to see what you are offering.
But also, allowing Meta’s AI to understand your offer and use that context to find the right people.
So whilst you are putting a little more love into making high-quality content, consider this:
Adding a CTA – for Meta
We use Calls to Action to tell our audience what we want them to do, but give Meta some help by telling Meta what you want to your target audience to accomplish in your ad copy.
Examples: “Give your details to grab your free trial”, “Book your massage appointment to get 50% off your first visit”
Not only guides your audience to what happens next, but also tells Meta specifically what you want your audience to accomplish.
Make your messaging abundantly clear
A great trick is to continue using your ad copy to speak directly to your audience, in their words. How do they talk? What slang is regularly used in their vocabulary? What quirks and behaviours are things they only understand in their POV (Point of View)?
Or, call out your niche in your copy instead of using broader terms to help Meta understand your angle in your ad.
All these efforts help guide Meta in the right direction, and find similar behaviours in audience that want to see your ad.
Look at different metrics for different cues
We are all about optimisation here.
Understanding what our next big step is can be found by looking at different cues in our analytics. Both of which you can read further in Stop Throwing Money Into the Void: How to Actually Optimise Your Facebook Ads and How to Read Your Instagram Dashboard: Analytics Terms Made Easy.
But what we mean here is to also look at other factors that can give you clues about your ad, specifically your copy. Things like ROAS, Cost per Result, and engagement rate are more valuable and help you understand more about your ad copy versus clicks, reach, impressions, etc. All metrics that Meta is using to seek out your audience.
OUr takeaways
We encourage you to reframe the way you think of your Meta Ads.
Instead of making your ads hyper-focused and interests stacked and narrowed, use your efforts in creating a killer ad copy and using your tools to guide AI in the right direction, use broader signals, and track their engagement.
By continuing to stack interests, you are leaving money on the table.
Want Help Navigating These Changes?
Meta ads — just like organic social media — are a constantly shifting landscape. And without the right strategy or guidance, it’s easy to feel lost, waste budget, or worse… throw money into a black hole with nothing to show for it.
But it doesn’t have to be that way.
We help small businesses like yours harness the power of AI and put your ads in front of the people who actually convert — saving you time, money, and endless guesswork.
By the end, our clients can draw that hard line from their social efforts, to their bottom line.
Be like other companies that are now seeing results from their Social Ads! It’s time to stop hoping for results and start building campaigns that actually deliver.
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