Brand Safety Tips for Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads provide businesses with powerful tools to create highly targeted campaigns, allowing you to refine your audience by age, gender, interests, job titles, location and more. However, it’s equally important to consider where your ads are being displayed. Many advertisers may not realise that their ads can appear outside of Facebook’s platform, such as on third-party apps and websites through the Facebook Audience Network.
This article explores how you can take control of your ad placements to ensure they align with your brand’s tone, ethics and safety standards.
Why Does Brand Safety Matter?
Facebook says:
“When you advertise on the Facebook family of apps and services, your ads can appear beyond Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. In-stream video, Instant Articles and Audience Network give you more opportunities to reach the customers you care about within unique, immersive experiences. But these placements are integrated with content and some advertisers won’t want to be associated with content that doesn’t fit their brand.”
Your ad’s placement can directly impact how your brand is perceived. Appearing alongside inappropriate or controversial content can harm your reputation, alienate your audience and reduce the effectiveness of your campaign.
Where Do Facebook Ads Appear?
By default, Facebook Ads are not limited to the Facebook platform. When you create an ad and select Automatic Placements, your content can be displayed:
- On Facebook, Instagram and Messenger.
- Across thousands of apps and websites via the Facebook Audience Network.
While the Audience Network can increase your reach and boost conversion rates, it also means you have less control over the content your ad may be displayed alongside. For brands with strong ethical or tonal requirements, this can pose a significant issue.
How to Control Your Facebook Ad Placements
Thankfully, Facebook offers tools and settings to help you manage and control where your ads appear.
- Manual Placement Selection
To ensure greater control, you can manually select where your ads will appear.
- In Ads Manager, go to Edit Placements when setting up your campaign.
- Deselect placements you want to avoid, such as Audience Network, while keeping Facebook, Instagram or Messenger active.
Bear in mind that excluding placements like Audience Network may reduce your reach or ROI. However, this may be worth it to ensure your brand aligns with appropriate content.
- Use Block Lists
If you wish to use the Audience Network but avoid specific websites, apps or Facebook Pages, you can create a Block List.
- Block Lists allow you to exclude placements that don’t match your brand values.
- These can be applied at the Business Manager, ad account or campaign level.
- Learn how to set up a Block List here.
- Inventory Filters
Facebook offers Inventory Filters to provide an additional layer of control over where your ads appear:
- Full Inventory: Ads may appear alongside sensitive content, such as tragedy, conflict or explicit language.
- Standard Inventory: Ads are excluded from more sensitive content.
- Limited Inventory: Ads appear in environments with the strictest content standards.
This tool allows you to match your ad placements to your brand’s safety needs. Explore what each level includes here.
- Live Stream Opt-Out
For ads displayed in Facebook in-stream video placements, your ads may appear in approved gaming live streams. If this doesn’t align with your brand, you can opt-out of this placement in Ads Manager.
Managing Facebook Ads Effectively
Facebook Ads is an incredibly effective marketing tool, but its success relies heavily on thoughtful planning and effective management. The tips above can help you ensure your ads are not only targeting the right audience but are also being displayed in the right context.
Need Help with Facebook Ads?
At The Last Hurdle, we manage Facebook advertising campaigns for a range of clients across different industries, tailoring strategies to match their unique brand ethics and goals.
If you’d like an experienced hand in managing your Facebook Ads, call us on 01604 654545 or email hello@thelasthurdle.co.uk. Let us help you create effective, well-placed campaigns that deliver results!
