What is the Update from Meta?

Meta announced updates coming in January 2025 that are poised to impact many health and wellness brands relying on direct response (DR) advertising. While the details are still unfolding, here’s what we currently know and how your brand can prepare.

‍Disclaimer: Not all health and wellness brands will be affected. The degree of impact varies by business category, ranging from minor core setup limitations to complete event restrictions.

What Type of Data-Sharing Restrictions Is Meta Enforcing?

If your data source falls under certain categories (health and wellness, finance, politics, religion, etc.), Meta may impose one of the following restrictions:

1. Core Setup Restriction

• What Happens:
  • Sharing of custom parameters and URL details beyond the domain will be restricted. For instance, https://jaspersmarket.com/clothes/summer/dresses?item=10 would be reduced to https://jaspersmarket.com/. This may limit custom audiences, data visibility in Events Manager, and other functionalities. You still may be able to send standard parameters that Meta defines.
• Impact: Minor
  • Campaigns can still be optimized for lower-funnel objectives like purchases, albeit with reduced data granularity.
    

2. Restrictions on Mid- and Lower-Funnel Events

• What Happens:
  • Accounts may face limitations on optimizing lower-funnel events such as Add to Cart or Purchase. Instead, campaigns may need to focus on upper-funnel objectives like Product Viewed, Awareness, or Traffic.
• Impact: Major
  • Advertisers will need to adjust their DR playbooks to prioritize upper-funnel strategies.
    

3. Full Restrictions

• What Happens:
  • Conversion events could be restricted entirely across all regions.
• Impact: Severe
  • Few advertisers are expected to face this extreme level of restriction.

Not all health and wellness brands will be affected. The degree of impact seems to vary by business category, ranging from minor core setup limitations to complete event restrictions.

How to Identify If Your Ad Account Is Affected

Meta will notify affected accounts, and you can verify your status by visiting Meta Events Manager: Data Sources > Settings > Manage Data Source Categories.

If Your Ad Account Faces Lower-Funnel Event Restrictions:

• You won’t be able to optimize campaigns for lower-funnel objectives (e.g., Purchase or Add to Cart). Instead, you’ll be limited to optimizing for upper-funnel actions such as Page Views or Product Viewed.
• While these objectives may increase traffic, they are less effective at driving purchases. Meta's machine learning systems tend to myopically optimize for the chosen event, often targeting low-quality audiences that engage with ads but rarely convert.

Navigating the Changes: Here’s How Proxima Can Help

Proxima is uniquely positioned to support brands facing the limitations of lower-funnel events. Here’s how:

1. AI Audiences

Use Proxima's AI-powered prospecting audiences to target high-fit, in-market prospects likely to purchase from your brand. This does not require any event sharing from your website <> Meta. This strategy leverages Proxima’s cross-store network of 80M shoppers with your storefront's first-party data and constructs LAL audiences exhibiting purchasing signals we match to your brand.

2. ConversionIQ

Proxima's advanced CAPI technology buckets your website traffic into intent-based categories:

• In-Market Buyers: Likely to convert in the same session.
• Moveable Middle: Likely to purchase within the attribution window (7–28 days).
• Low Intent: Window shoppers are unlikely to buy soon.

We'll then send only the high-value standard events (such as page views and product views) to Meta while filtering out low-intent traffic. It ensures your ad spend targets mid- and high-intent audiences and maximizes ROI, even with Meta’s new restrictions.

ConversionIQ will not be impacted by Meta's updates:

• ConversionIQ does not send custom events to Meta. Instead, it sticks to standard events. We support not only health & wellness but also healthcare tech clients (strictly under HIPAA).
• ConversionIQ is a viable solutions for health & wellness brands because we send standard events with optimizations implemented. Brands facing limitations on lower-funnel events, such as add to cart or purchases, can use ConversionIQ to optimize targeting of high-value upper/mid-funnel events for users more likely to convert. 

Learn more about our risk-free AI Audiences + ConversionIQ test here.

The Path Forward

While Meta’s 2025 changes may disrupt traditional DR strategies for health and wellness brands, these adjustments also present an opportunity to refine your approach. By leveraging predictive insights, data-enriched audiences, and an advanced CAPI, your brand can adapt and thrive in this evolving landscape.

Ready to future-proof your paid ads strategy? Schedule a call with Proxima today.