Meta's Special Ad Category➞ What Insurance Agents Need to Know

The Meta Special Ad Category. In today's video, we are diving into compliancy around the Meta Special Ad Category. So if you're an insurance agent or other licensed professional, this is information that is crucial for you to know, especially if you're already running ads. But even if you're considering it in the future, these are the things that you need to know, because when you're not compliant in today's day and age, you are risking not only getting your ad account banned, but getting you as the advertiser banned at an IP level. So in today's video, we're going to talk briefly about the special ad category history. I'm going to demystify the algorithm and especially dive into our new algorithm Andromeda. We're going to talk about audience targeting, what we can control and what we no longer can control. And then we're going to talk about data collection at the ad level. And this one is one of the most crucial ones to fully be able to understand what it means to be compliant. I always say we don't fuck with the IRS, CMS, or Meta. We just have to understand their rules when we're playing on their playground, and that's exactly what we're going to be talking about today. All right, let's start off by talking just briefly about the special ad category history. Now, in 2019 is when Meta first introduced this Meta special ad category, and it was focusing primarily on financial, housing, job posting, and political type of ads. And the entire purpose behind it was to protect specific demographics and locations from being purposefully excluded from opportunities. Now, I understand you might think like, as advertisers, shouldn't we have a right to target whoever we want? Yes, to some degree, but there was a lot of discrimination that was happening that was not allowing certain demographics to see these crucial opportunities. And Meta was under, or Facebook at the time, was under some hot water whenever it came to this. So they introduced the Meta Special Ad category in order to basically protect protect them. And then in January of 2025 was whenever it made the shift for us in the insurance space. And that's when insurance was truly categorized as a special ad category. Now, I will tell you, I first started running ads in 2016, managed multiple millions of dollars in ad spend, and then in 2022 is when I started specializing in the insurance space. And I'll tell you, when this change happened in January of 2025, I dove all in to speaking to people know, at Meta, to speaking to other ad experts that had experience in this space. And I will say in 2025, I spent over $2.5 million in ad spend specifically in the special ad category focusing on lead generation. And I saw inside of hundreds of different independent insurance agents' ad accounts, thanks to my coaching and my membership and the agents that I work with. So I have a pulse on what is working, what isn't working, how we can play by these rules and how we can really still get killer results when Whenever it comes to our lead generation. Now, my next video, we need to talk about compliancy, but my next video, we are going to be diving into specifically strategies that are working. So make sure to subscribe if you want to hear about that. Now, let's briefly talk about the algorithm. There is so much mystery about how the algorithm actually works. So in a nutshell, the algorithm's job is to try to take the content that you have and match it with the right user. And Meta. Cares greatly about the content that is being served to its users. Not for a warm fuzzy reason, but the users scrolling on the platform are literally how they make money. So they have learned that the more relevant the ad is with the user, then the less likely the user is to click off the platform and to leave it whenever they are served an ad. So they want your ads to get in front of the right people. But the algorithm has made a big shift over the 10 years that I've been in this industry and kind of understanding it will help you understand why certain strategies that I teach work currently right now, not the old school way. So the old school way of running ads back in 2016, especially through about 2019, our superpower as marketers was being able to really come up with these very, very specific niche targeting audiences. And then Meta very, very slowly started to remove certain targeting options. So I mean, we used to have things layered where it would be like they have to have this job title, they have to have this interest on top of it. They're using this iPhone. Um, so we know it's the current model. On top of that, we know that they've traveled recently, all of these little things to try to get into specific incomes. Um, and then really be able to target individuals. And I'm gonna tell you, I still see people struggle with this shift that we've made. And I'm like, girl, boy, you be stuck in like 2017 because they slowly, slowly started removing targeting options and they started pushing us as advertisers towards broad targeting where it used to be each ad set, which we're gonna talk about, you're gonna understand what an ad set is here even if you don't yet. Each audience that I was targeting, I used to not want it to be over 1 million to like 2 million max. That would be the biggest audience that I wouldn't wanna target in each ad set. And sometimes I would even narrow it down to be like right at a million. They started moving it where it's like, no, we want it to be 5 million, we want it to be 10 million, we want it to be more broad targeting. And I will tell you, One of the things that was influencing this was TikTok. TikTok had not like taken off yet, but TikTok's algorithm was always very much about the content finds the user. So that was kind of starting to have some play on the Meta platforms as well. In 2019, as we talked about, Meta implemented the special ad category for specific lines of business. Not us. We weren't as the insurance space or a financial advisor or an estate planning attorney. We weren't in that category yet, but that's when they first introduced it. Then in 2020, 2023, Meta started pushing what's called Advantage+ targeting. And that was really trying to say, we prefer for you to choose broad targeting over trying to do this more niche targeting. And that's because the algorithm was getting better and better at the content finding the user. And then in December of 2024 through about December of 2025 is when we started to get this brand new algorithm that was introduced to us. And maybe you've heard Andromeda, there's a lot of things around it because Andromeda, the way that Andromeda makes the decisions of who to serve to and how to actually serve your ads is drastically different from the old algorithm. So the old algorithm, the old school way of thinking was find users first. So I'd say, here's this very specific group to serve my ads to, test my ad creatives within those users, and then optimize accordingly. And And back then we were testing things like a black and white image to a colored image, an image that had like a teal border on it to a yellow border. We were like niche testing tiny little things because we had this tiny little control audience, and then the algorithm would optimize accordingly. With Andromeda, it's very different. It wants to understand the content first. The difference is we live in a world of AI, so Andromeda is utilizing AI to read your content Check out your page, check out your posts, understand what you have to offer, what it is that you're looking for. Then go try to find users that they think are going to convert. Now you're going to hear as we kind of get into some of the limitations of the ads that we are able to collect information we aren't, things we are that we aren't able to control. I'm going to tell you, I'm extremely thankful that insurance, for us, that insurance did not fall in the Meta Special Ad category until 2025, because we're very lucky that when we fell into it, we fell into an algorithm that was already understanding how to do the work for us. It was understanding how to actually read the ads and match you with users that are going to respond. And then of course, it's going to optimize accordingly. And this kind of brings me to one of my biggest takeaways, probably from anything that I do in teaching ads, and that is your ads do the targeting. As we start talking about the way that certain limitations that we have whenever it comes to targeting, I'm telling you, your ads are what actually does the targeting. And that's why the messaging on your ads, what you have to say, is more important than ever. And I, I always share, I'm not always actively running ads for myself, but I run active ads for myself regularly whenever I am looking to promote my course. And I'm not a special ad category. I don't, I'm not an insurance agent. I don't sell insurance. I only teach insurance agents. But because I use the words that are common in the insurance world, I'm flagged as a special ad category. And I have to run my ads in the special ad category, so I can't even target insurance agents specifically. However, my ads are so specific, they are still finding the right user. So I'm here to tell you, when you have ads that speak to the right user, your ads will be served to the right person. And again, if you want to hear very specific strategies when we get into what's actually working tactically and then also message-wise, then make sure that you subscribe and I will see you in the next video when we talk about that. That. All right, so the ads are what is going to do the targeting. Now let's kind of actually dive into what we can and we can't do whenever it comes to audience targeting. Now, whenever you look in the backend of the Ads Manager, okay, this is a screenshot from the backend of the Ads Manager, you are going to see that there are 3 different tabs. Okay, there's the campaign level, there's the ad set level, And then there is the ad level. The way that I teach this is I always break down the backend of the Ads Manager like we're building a beautiful tree. So we've got those 3 different levels. So the campaign level is the roots of the operation. It's where we make specific decisions that influence the rest of the tree that we're going to be working out. Then at the ad set level, is where we are primarily dealing with our audience. So it's our audience, it's where we are serving our ads, it's where we are doing the schedule, it's sometimes where we're doing the budget and so on. And then within that ad set is where we have our actual leaves or the actual ads. Now everyone that is in the ad set here is going to see the leaves or the ads that are attached to it. So there's lots of different creative things That we can do whenever it comes to setting up the structure of our campaign. So just right off the bat, we don't always have to have multiple ad sets, but if we were running, let's say, an ad for final expense, we could decide that one ad set is Texas, one ad set is Alabama, one ad set is Georgia, and so on. And then we could make these ads be so specific to Texas seniors and speak to them in a very specific way, knowing that our ads are only going to be served to Texas residents. And so on. There's other reasons why we would wanna have multiple ad sets. But one thing that I do want you to know is where you might have one campaign and then you might have one ad set, you should always have multiple ads. A huge mistake that new advertisers make in all spaces is that they just put one ad out there. It is the quickest way for one, Meta to charge you more. 2, you not get any data. 3, you not to understand what you can do. And 4, there's no way that it's going to be able to optimize from that. So just know that when it comes to the Meta Special Ad Category, we turn that on at the campaign level. And this is what it would look like whenever you are in the backend of the Ads Manager right there where it says Special Ad Category. Then you would click that and you absolutely must select this. Yes, you must. I still see, after we've been in this special ed category for a year and a half at this point, I still see different blog posts, different teachers trying to say ways that we could just decide not to run it and try to trick the algorithm. Don't, don't for several reasons. One, it's just like risky. We don't, we don't need to be risky like that. We don't wanna risk getting banned from advertising. And 2, you don't need to do that. You don't need some sneaky snake, I'm gonna try to outsmart the algorithm plan in order to still have success. Successful ads, it really all comes down to the messaging. So whenever you turn on the special ad category at the campaign level, it instantly makes changes on what you can and cannot do at the ad set level. So let's kind of talk about what you can and you can't do at the ad set. So we still can control the state. So that's good news. We're only going to be serving ads at the state that you're licensed in. We can control the city plus plus 15 miles. We still have specific interests. So last that I checked, there's like health insurance, there's life insurance, there's investments, um, there's, uh, things that have to do with estate planning. There's still the ability for you to give the algorithm a little bit like, hey friend, like here's a little, a little extra info. Go try to get people that are within this. And we still can control the ad placement. Now this is a bigger deal than a lot of people realize. There's lots of different places. Placements on the Meta platforms. There's the newsfeed, which is the main spot that you will be scrolling. There's the Reels section, which is the video that you normally watch. And then there's the Stories, which is the little circle around people's profile. And those are the 3 main ones, but there's also little sneaky placements that they'll use, such as ads on Reels. And that's where when you are watching a video, it will pop up tiny, tiny on the bottom. Now I'm gonna tell you, most of these extra placements can be great e-commerce. Like, if I was looking at a pair of shoes that I forgot about and then I happened to be watching a cat video and it pops up and it's like, look at these shoes, I might want to click on it. When it comes to a Medicare workshop or like an annuity event or like wanting to schedule a consult to talk about IUL, I'm sorry, if I'm watching my cat video and your tiny little thing pops up, it's not going to grab my attention. So we want to make sure that we exclude specific placements. So ads on Reels, we always want to exclude Audience Network, which technically means that Meta can serve your ads with apps and third-party websites that they have a relationship with. Your ad pops up there, they get to charge you money for that. And then even more today, there is a setting that you're going to see, and I'm just remembering this right now, you'll see a little thing that pops up that says, can we spend 5% of ad spend on excluded placements? And the answer is, uh, no, you cannot waste 5% of my budget. This box is always pre-checked whenever you are excluding placements. So make sure that you go in and you uncheck that box because we do not want them wasting any of our ad spend. All right, let's talk about what you cannot control. So whenever it comes to the ad set, we cannot control the zip code anymore. So the best that we can get is city plus 15 miles. Now, that being said, if we're trying to get really specific about a placement, we could technically, like I have, um, a long-term client that we target specific cities. So we always incorporate the city's name in all of our ads. So it feels super specific. We can't target the gender. We can't control the age. And this one, I'm gonna tell you, I got a little nervous in January of 2025 of Okay, if we can't control the age, how are we supposed to do T65 ads? Because before I was teaching a strategy where we did it based on people's birthday. And I'm happy to tell you that when you have the right ad creatives, that your ads in the first 1,000 to 3,000 impressions or 1,000 to 3,000 eyeballs, your ads should swing over and start being served to the right demographic. So when you're running your own ads, you're going to be looking at metrics and you have to understand The algorithm wants to match you with the right people. It does. But because our targeting is 18 through 65+, your ads for Medicare, for annuities, for long-term care, whatever it is, final expense, is going to get served a few times at least to people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s. But when the algorithm goes, oh, over here, this person, Tim, he didn't like the ad, but over here, Bob, Bob, he liked it and he converted into a lead. I'm gonna go find more Bobs. It's gonna very quickly go, oh, look at that. Bob was 64 years old, 65 years old. I'm gonna go get more Bobs. Or Bob was 55 years old. I'm gonna go get more 55-year-olds or other things that are happening that the algorithm starts to learn. So you will see that the algorithm will swing over. This is why it's so important to be in control of reading your own metrics in the backend of the Ads Manager, because we can break down the data and see We wanna see the age that it's being served, and we wanna see terrible metrics, low link click-through rates, people that are clicking or not clicking and not converting in the wrong demographic. But then we wanna see really good, beautiful metrics whenever it comes to the demographic that we want. But I promise you, I'm here to tell you, I have agents that are generating Medicare leads and getting it targeted. I have an interview on my channel of someone that's doing it for $3.36. Wow. I'm going to be honest with you. The average cost per Medicare lead that I'm seeing right now in my group is between $7 and $12-ish, but it's very possible for you to continuously be able to optimize and bring that cost per lead down. Now here's 2 little like bonus information that I want to share with you that you can do and you can't do. So something that you can do, and this is good news, is we still can retarget. And what I mean is whenever it comes to retargeting, we can choose to get in front of people that have interacted with us before. So a nice one is engagement. So we can optimize for engagement on our page. So if someone has, for example, liked one of our posts, watched one of our videos, but they haven't converted, we can set up a retargeting ad. I'll be honest with you. Andromeda right now is already incorporating retargeting, which is really nice. I still run retargeting campaigns, but on a much lower budget just to make sure it's out there. Um, but you still can definitely do that. And then you can use a compliant customer list, so an email list. So if you have an email list of individuals that are already your clients, you could run something right before AEP that basically says like, it's time for us to have our meeting and you can get in front of them compliantly. Now, some people are using this to try to say, well, I'm gonna go buy an email list of like geo-targeted email addresses. That's not compliant. And if you get caught doing that, and it's not hard for them to see if you're like uploading thousands and thousands of, of people that all kind of seem to have something in common, that's not compliant with Meta. Okay? It's not. And I wanna add something that you no longer can do. Okay? And that is you cannot use a lookalike audience. Okay? Now, a lookalike audience is a cold audience. Okay? So cold, that's terrible. Cold. So the difference between cold and warm. So cold is someone that has never heard of you. They've never interacted with you. Warm is someone that has either interacted with you in some way, or they might automatically be on your email list. A lookalike audience is a strategy that used to be really powerful where you would take specific lists and you would tell Meta, I wanna create a lookalike audience of it, and I want us to target them. Now, we can't do that in the special ad category. Do we need to? No. Meta's automatically doing that. But the reason why I want you to know that you cannot use the lookalike audience is because I still hear marketers and insurance gurus in your space saying things like, yeah, well, it's just that like, it's not good for agents to start learning how to run ads. It takes a while to build up lookalike audiences and know how to target them. Them, they use fancy language because they know that it's going to make you feel a little bit intimidated and make you think that it's so complicated. It's not, okay? We can't do lookalike audiences. It's not a big deal. But what is a big deal is whenever you use that language on purpose to kind of talk over people's heads and make it sound like you're doing something that's like super complicated when it's actually not. Let's talk about data collection, and this is what we are allowed and not allowed to actually ask for from the user on our ad. So whether we're asking for them to sign up for a consult, for a lead magnet, for a webinar, whether it is using a Meta lead form or if you are using your own landing page, technically this is what is compliant and what isn't compliant. So we can still collect obviously their name, their email address, their phone number. We can ask for their state and we can ask for a custom question. Now we're going to get into strategies in my next video, But custom questions, this is not to make your job easier. Okay? The custom questions are to get the user to engage with you because the more that they engage just a little bit, that's one way that we can vet them for quality. Not asking for as much information as possible. I'm sorry, they've never heard of you. We don't need to dive in and try to get all the information we can at once. We wanna get the minimal amount of information that we need in order to pluck them off the platform. So now we can call them, email them, text them, message them, and so on. So I like to use a custom question for a couple of different things strategically. Now, what we cannot ask for, we cannot ask for the zip code, we cannot ask for their gender, we cannot ask for their age or birthday, and we cannot ask for their relationship status. Now, look, I, there has been a lot of confusion around the zip code, and to be honest with you, if you've seen lead vendor ads or insurance ads that are asking for zip codes, actually in an upcoming video, I'm going to talk about why you're still seeing that. Okay. Seeing that and what strategies are being used to either compliantly ask for zip code or not compliantly ask for zip code. And I'm gonna tell you how you could compliantly ask for it and the specific strategy. But here's the thing, guys, there's been a lot of confusion around zip code, and I'll be honest with you, I'm always trying to keep my course up to date. And not that long ago, I had a Meta rep tell me that we could ask for zip code. I did some testing with my own ads, nothing got rejected. I then let my members know that I work with on their ad accounts. Several of them ran ads without an issue, but then two of them got their ads rejected due to the zip code. So I'm here to tell you it's not compliant. Now, once we pluck that user off the platform, we absolutely can ask for any information that we want to from them. We can say, hey, thanks so much for signing up. I, there are plans that are specific to the area that you're living in, and I wanna make sure that I am ready to share with you all of the details. Please gimme your zip code so that way that can already be prepped for you. And so on. But it's very important that we stay compliant. If you have any questions about compliancy, please drop them below. And again, if you are interested in the strategies that are working right now, that's coming up. Make sure you subscribe. And if you're interested in how are lead vendors or other advertisers still asking for zip code and doing some of these other little shady things, that is going to be the video that is coming up after the strategies video. I know it's not always like the most fun thing to talk about being compliant, but I'm going to tell you this. You are still able to generate killer lead generation results thanks to the algorithm when you know how to actually use strategies that work. And that comes down to the right campaign structure. And the most important thing is your ads messaging. So even if you're not running ads right now, the best thing you can do right now is start practicing your messaging by starting to post. Now, I promise you are more than capable, you are more than able, and you're more than worthy of achieving anything that you want in your business. You just have to take the next step to go get it, and I'm always rooting for you.