Meta Pixel Changes For Health & Wellness Brands - A Quick Update

Hi guys! Important updates coming to Meta's data tracking for health & wellness brands. I want to make sure you're prepared for these changes and know exactly how to keep your tracking and campaigns performing optimally.

What’s Changing?

Starting around January 6–13, 2025, Meta is introducing big changes to how it handles ads for health and wellness brands. Businesses in this category will no longer be able to share key event data with Meta, particularly affecting the ability to optimize for events like "Purchase" and other lower-funnel events.

How do I know if my brand is affected?

You'll receive emails, and in-product notifications in Ads Manager and Events Manager about which ad sets and events are impacted.

Check your data source category in Meta Events Manager: Data Sources > Settings > Manage Data Source Categories. (Meta’s help article here).

Types of data source restrictions

1. Core Setup Restrictions. Limits on the sharing custom parameters and parts of your store’s URLs after the domain. Learn more about core setup.

2. Partial Event Restriction. Affects specific mid- and lower-funnel events (like “Purchase”), aka you can no longer track lower-funnel conversion events. To adapt, focus on upper-funnel events like Awareness or Engagement to keep targeting and optimization effective.

3. Full Event Restrictions. In some regions, Meta may fully restrict all event tracking. This means Events Manager won’t support campaign optimization in those areas. If this happens, you might need to adjust or pause campaigns as performance could decline.

How to check your core setup:

Meta Timeline & Review Process

When Meta review, they will only utilize the site and how the product is marketed on the site to guide their enforcement decision on these matters. Yu won’t be able to submit additional documentation as the domain will be the source of truth.

There is a 30-day cooldown period in between review attempts and as far as timelines for enforcement are concerned, please see below.

1. Jan 6th-13th: Rolling notifications - we will give advertisers (on a rolling basis) 7 days to click a “more time” button in Events Manager to get additional 30 days if they need it to address these changes.

2. Jan 14th-21st : For businesses, who have NOT requested more time. The "more time" button will be gone, and the additional restrictions will be applied for advertisers who did not use this button. Advertisers will receive an email informing them restrictions are now active for their data source. For clients, who HAVE requested for more time.

3. Feb 14th - 21st: The additional restrictions will start for advertisers who did use the “more time” button. Advertisers will receive an email informing them that restrictions are now active for their data source.

Things we don’t know yet

1. Not all health & wellness brands are equally affected. Meta will only utilize the site and how the product is marketed on the site to decide. So the criteria is not very clear.

2. Little information on how the events will be restricted from technical side. What information in tracking will be restricted and how will they be restricted technically.

How can I stay ahead of Meta’s restrictions?

1. Review your brand’s classification

Check your Events Manager to see if your website or app is flagged under a restricted category.

• Common categories include health, wellness, financial services, politics, and other sensitive topics.

• If you’re wrongly categorized, file an appeal immediately.

2. Clean up your website/ads claims

Avoid exaggerated statements related to solving health or medical conditions like “cure certain disease” or “heal certain symptoms.” Keep it truthful and compliant.

3. Leverage first-party data for long-term success

Through first-party data, you can create custom events to track lower-funnel events using neutral custom event names. Continue tracking lower-funnel conversion events through custom events instead of standard events. It’s a good idea to start testing a custom event strategy now to stay ahead. Meta has stated that properly registered and compliant custom events will still work for optimization, even with these new restrictions.

Example of custom events tracking we’ve implemented for our customers:

You can then continue optimizing for the lower-funnel conversion event using custom events instead of standard events. Do this by switching all lower-funnel customer conversion events as the conversion target in your Ads Campaign.

While planning for conversion optimization using upper-funnel standard events, e.g. Page View, View Content, Search. The downside of this option is losing insights into ad performance on conversions and the inability to optimize for conversions.

4. Monitor enforcement closely.

Keep in mind, it will be an increasingly regulated area. Any policy changes may results in technical adjustments.

If you have any questions – just email me. I read every single message and am ready to help you navigate these changes 😎

For Aimerce Customers

If you're using Aimerce, you already have access to built-in solutions for these changes:

• Pre-configured compliant custom events

• Automated event mapping

• Integrated first-party data tracking solutions

Contact us at support if you need help turning on this setting.

Additional Resources

• Digiday - As health and wellness brands brace for ad restrictions on Meta, marketers and advertisers seek more transparency

• Understand data sharing restrictions based on data source categories

• About data source categories in Meta Events Manager

• How to manage data source categories in Meta Events Manager