October 19, 2018
We all know that the Facebook algorithm changes almost daily at the moment. With all the constant changes, it’s hard to know what Facebook will now choose to classify as incriminating and will choose to demote, and there’s no doubt that the platform is clamping down on content. Earlier on in 2018, Facebook decided their goal for the year would be to prioritise meaningful interactions between friends and family, and that they would overhaul the algorithm and news feed to help make this happen. To make this work, Facebook also heightened their posting restrictions and looked at demoting any posts that could be classified as ‘engagement bait’, so any posts that goad the user into sharing, tagging, liking or commenting.
A new change introduced earlier on this week means ads that contain sensationalised language or headlines that are seen to be withholding information will also be penalised. It’s unclear exactly how Facebook will categorise the headlines, but if it’s being taken anywhere near as seriously as their recent clampdown on profanity and harassment, we may need to take a look at every single headline we’re writing. This could prove to be a great way of getting rid of invaluable, low-quality ads that don’t lead to landing pages, we just hope that Facebook don’t take it to extremes with the headline restrictions. It will be interesting to see whether offers in headlines will be considered as exaggerated or sensationalised. If you’re trying to create a sense of urgency with an offer, it’s difficult for headlines not to come across slightly exaggerated!
Facebook are also suggesting that this new change means if an advertiser has more than one post flagged for what Facebook deem to be low-quality attributes, the performance of all their future ads may be impacted.