On July 30, Facebook announced that it is going to remove thousands of outdated and infrequently used interest targets, such as old movie and brand names and other older cultural references.
Graham Mud, BP of product marketing for ads at Facebook said in an interview that a large majority of Facebook advertisers aren’t going to notice the removals.
These interest targets are going to be deprecated across all Facebook Ads interfaces, including APIs.
These interest groups won’t be available for new campaigns. Advertisers who are using these targets will be notified starting August that they targets aren’t going to be used any longer. The interest targets will be allowed to run for a few months or so before advertisers will be prompted to change their targets. A specific date hasn’t been determined yet.
There could be some very specific cases that this will affect, but as as Mudd said, most advertisers likely won’t notice the removals. Clearing out the clutter of some of the older and less used interest targets makes sense from a maintenance perspective for Facebook. This could also make interest selection easier for advertisers without having to go through so many different options.
According to Mudd, this is part of an effort to make the platform easier and more consistent to use. Advertisers should expect to see continued focus on streamlining processes and features.