Shortly after Cambridge Analytica’s data scandal became public knowledge, Facebook announced they would be shutting down Partner Category targeting in Facebook in May. This is a big upset for a lot of marketers, us included.

Partner Categories have been around since as long as I can remember working with Facebook ads which puts them over five years old. Originally only available in Power Editor, these targeting capabilities made it easier for advertisers to push ads to users who had attributes that you might not have been able to gather from a user’s Facebook habits alone. Some of the most popular Partner Categories include the following:

• Automotive
  • What kind of car you own
  • What kind of car you’re looking to buy
• Financial information
  • Net worth
  • Income
• Purchase behavior
• Charitable donations
• Employment
  • Job role
  • Job industry
• Household
  • Rent or own
  • First time home buyers

Graphic courtesy Acxiom

There are a lot more than what’s listed above… You can actually peep a semi-current list of them all here. As you can see, that’s quite a bit of data that’s going away. If you structure your campaigns around these categories, you need to start planning for their inevitable departure right now. If you want to retain your audiences from Partner Categories but aren’t sure how, TMBPartners can help. Contact us today for a free consultation. And seriously don’t sleep on this one. Once they’re gone, they’re probably not coming back.