Meta is shaking things up again with new regulations affecting payor advertising. In this episode, Jenny and Miranda, Hedy & Hopp’s Director of Paid Media, break down Meta’s updates to the financial products and services category, including new targeting restrictions, and how broad location radius requirements and inclusive demographic rules are reshaping campaign strategies. With targeting getting less precise, lead quality is bound to shift, making now the time to reset expectations and fine-tune how success is measured.
Resources
Meta’s Changes
2025 Trends in Paid Media
Connect with Miranda:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mirandamochsner/
Connect with Jenny:
Email: jenny@hedyandhopp.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennybristow/
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Hi friends! Welcome to today’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy, a healthcare marketing podcast. My name is Jenny Bristow and I am your host. And I’m also the CEO and founder of Hedy & Hopp, a full-service, fully healthcare marketing agency. And we are the proud creators of this podcast. Today, I’m very excited to have Hedy & Hopp’s very own Miranda on.
Miranda’s our Director of Paid Media. Miranda joined us for a state of paid media episode that we did a handful of months ago. I think it was in December. And we talked a little bit about all of the shifts that are happening to paid media. We talked a little bit about meta in particular and the impact it was having on targeting and conversion tracking in healthcare.
And of course, our good friends Meta have now released additional regulations on all of our payor friends. So those of you in the health insurance space. So I asked Miranda to come on today to give us a little bit of information about what these new rules are and what the impact may be. So, Miranda, to kick us off, give us an overview.
What’s going on?
Miranda: Sure. So, back in October of 2024, Facebook introduced this financial products and services category. And it was previously the credit category if you want to call it that. They expanded it. And utilizing this specifically it will affect our payor friends. It’s mandatory as of now. So we have to really change how we’re, setting up those campaigns.
Look at it targeting even down to, like, messaging specifically, you know, really making sure, we’re staying compliant, but following these new, stricter targeting rules. So, when we’re looking at targeting it, we cannot just pinpoint different zip codes or different counties anymore. We have to we have to pick up a pin drop if you want to call it that.
And it has to be a minimum of a 15-mile radius around that selected point. So it can’t just be, for example, here in Saint Louis, we can’t just say we want, 63109 63116. We have to have pretty much like the entire Saint Louis DMA, which, you know, is, could be a challenge for some of our, you know, some of our, some of our clients just depending on, you know, all the different audience breakouts and different regions and different messaging and whatnot.
It has to be a little bit more, a little bit more broad. Also with age and gender, we cannot just go like women 25 plus. It has to be exclusive of all adults. So there’s really no filtering and filtering allowed, which again could play into how we’re setting up, you know, we’re setting up campaigns and whatnot.
They’re taking away some of our interspace targeting as well. You know, and, specifically on the location piece to, you, we cannot exclude. So we can’t say this pinpoint with a 15-mile radius but exclude this neighborhood. It has to be the entire 15-plus mile radius specifically on that, you know, and the purpose why, that is doing this is really to increase the transparency and prevent that discrimination, really to be all-inclusive and maximizing that reach. So not having such segmented and whatnot from an audience standpoint and, you know, being inclusive, but also keeping all of that data transparent.
Jenny: Absolutely. So, you know, looking I don’t want to say outside in because we have a lot of payor clients whose media campaigns that we manage actively.
But we can definitely see the positive reasons why they implemented this. It’s not just to be a pain in the booty like they are in a lot of ways.
Miranda: Exactly.
Jenny: But it is they’re trying to do something good here, which I can, you know, when Meta does anything that kind of could be good, we shouldn’t give them credit, when that happens.
So let’s talk a little bit about the impact to campaigns in particular. So it rolled out in October, but it’s mandatory as of now. So most folks got through open enrollment without having to worry about any of this. Right. So at this point we’re more thinking about, you know, this calendar year and going into open enrollment this fall.
Right. Let’s talk about the impact to folks as they’re thinking about their media strategies.
Miranda: Sure. So it’s definitely, you know, looking at this year as you’re looking through that larger strategy conversation, thinking about it in a more, broad benefit-focused, standpoint, specific around, you know, that and creative in that messaging. You know, we want to make sure we want to make sure that we’re, we’re being inclusive with the messaging and staying.
You know, I believe an example that the team found for, you know, that broad compliance-friendly messaging was, you know, learn more about your medicare options today versus do you have diabetes or do you have X condition? Find a plan for you. So really making sure we’re using that friendly or broad message but also staying, you know, staying compliant.
You know we I will say from a, from an impact standpoint, this potentially will lead to less lead quality, like a less precise sleep quality. So I think we have to be mindful, you know, as we’re, you know, as we’re making those broader messages, we might have to shift it from, hey, let’s use Meta is more of like mid to lower funnel, and it’s going to definitely become more of that upper to mid.
That mid-funnel component. And then just also from a performance standpoint, right. It’s going to we’re going to be looking at it from a CPM model potentially versus a CPC model or CP cost per completed view or, you know, versus that cost per lead. So keep it in mind as we’re looking at that, of like, we’re going to have to measure this metric much differently when we’re laid out reporting and how we’re defining success.
Jenny: And for those of you, if you have not yet listened to our 2025 paid media trends, I encourage you to go back. If you have not really caught up on the measurement changes that Meta made to healthcare folks, we really now have to shift the way that we’re measuring lower funnel tactics. And for those of you that have already implemented privacy-focused analytics, such as server side Google Tag Manager, most of our clients weren’t impacted at all with these changes.
We’d already implemented changes that Meta was okay was we’re still able to target those lower funnel. But if you’re not yet, this may be that last push. You need to kind of prepare for as tight of measurement as possible going into this next open enrollment season.
Miranda: So it’s fun. They’re keeping us on our toes. I know one of our core values here at Hedy & Hopp is pivot with positivity and Meta is one of those reasons why.
Miranda: Exactly. You know, to your point, Jenny. You know Meta is trying to do something good so we can definitely see it from that standpoint. But on the marketing side of it, it’s just going to force us to have those more strategic conversations and the upfront of how we need to kind of look at our audiences a little bit differently, but also how we’re how we’re defining success and how it’s just one small piece of a much larger puzzle.
Jenny: Absolutely. But, before we wrap, I did want to share one additional example of an oh, no. I had some really interesting conversations. We have a couple of, you know, I talk about this often, but as an agency, we have, you know, both our existing client base as well as net new folks coming. Oh, we’ve had an influx of folks recently asking about geofencing.
So they’ll be times, you know, throughout the calendar year, we always do all of these different tactics, but you have to dig into the granularity for some of them a little bit more. We had to look at a couple of new geographies, geofencing is not allowed in the state of Texas because precise, geo locations, according to the Texas privacy law, is considered sensitive information.
They don’t exempt HIPAA entities, whereas it is allowed in Missouri and some other states. So just an FYI and another consideration as you’re thinking about media planning, you really need to make sure that you either have somebody within your internal team, or you have a media partner that can make sure that you’re developing a strategy and then implementing and activating that strategy according to the, you know, patchwork of privacy laws we have going on.
Because it’s not so easy. We already know, and we’ve talked about how retargeting is out the window. We can’t do that anymore. But now even geofencing and targets like, and tactics like that now have a patchwork, you know, of compliance that we have to take into consideration.
Miranda: Hurts my media heart a little bit, you know, but knowing that we each state has a different role, I think. What do we say 19 states have privacy laws right now. More should be coming online in the next couple of years. And they’re different. They’re not consistent state to state. So really truly understanding the what we can and cannot do from the very beginning is, is just crucial.
Jenny: Absolutely. What Miranda, thank you so much for coming on today.
I really hope for all of our payor friends that are tuning in. This was helpful and hopefully gave you enough of a heads-up that you have time to revise your media strategies to account for the shifting landscape, you know, going into the fall season. And as always, if you have any questions, payors are one of our key areas of focus, so we’d love to chat, give us a shout, and we’d be happy to chat through some additional thoughts around media and driving volumes going into next year’s open enrollment period. And with that, thank you so much for tuning in to this week’s episode of We Are, Marketing Happy. Be sure to subscribe so you’re notified of future episodes and we’ll see you soon! Have a great day!
