Meta’s 2025 Ad Tracking Changes: What You Need to Know

What Is Changing?

Starting January 13, 2025, Meta’s pixels and CAPI (Conversions API) integrations will no longer transmit data if your domain falls into one of ten categories associated with implied special category data. This restriction applies at the domain or sub-domain level, rather than the ad account level, and includes keywords found on your website, even in your URL.

This update largely went under the radar, and Meta has not provided clear reasons for its timing or the lack of prior notice.

Restricted Data Source Categories

Meta has outlined categories that may have data-sharing restrictions, including but not limited to:

• Health and wellness: Websites associated with medical conditions, specific health statuses, or provider-patient relationships (e.g., a patient portal or a wellness tracker for depression)
• Financial services: Platforms providing financial tools, consultations, services, or consumer credit reports
• Unsuitable content: Topics that violate Meta’s Community and Advertising Standards, including hate speech, violence, and illegal activities
• Politics: Content related to specific political parties, political positions, or political issues
• Race: Content associated with individuals of a specific race
• Religion: Content related to specific religious or spiritual beliefs and practices
• Sexuality: Content related to sexual orientation
• Gender identity: Content associated with specific gender identities
• Nationality: Content related to citizenship status, immigration status, or refugee status
• Trade union: Content associated with trade union membership
• Personal hardship: Content related to individuals likely facing personal hardship

Meta has stated that this list is not exhaustive and may evolve over time.

How Could These Changes Impact You?

If your domain is restricted:

• You will be unable to run Meta ad campaigns with conversion goals such as lead generation, completed registrations, or donations.
• You will lose the ability to build retargeting or lookalike audiences based on restricted events. This is particularly concerning, as these audience types have historically performed well.
• However, higher-funnel objectives like awareness, engagement, and traffic will remain unaffected.

How to Know If You’re Impacted

Initially, Meta framed this update around health-related categories, making it unclear how it would affect other sectors. However, since its implementation, we’ve seen approximately 20% of our clients in the religious category impacted, with no clear pattern as to why some are affected and others are not.

While many organisations remain unaffected, there is no guarantee that your domain won’t be impacted in the future.

To check if your organisation is affected:

• Go to the Events section of your Meta Business Manager account, where alerts will indicate any restricted domains and their assigned categories.
• If your domain is restricted, you will also receive an email from Meta specifying which pixels and domains have been affected.

What Can You Do?

If your domain has been impacted, consider these strategies:

• Move signals up the funnel – Optimise campaigns using higher-funnel objectives where Meta can still track visible data within its platform.
• Use “clean” subdomains or microsites – Avoid restricted categorisation by removing sensitive keywords (e.g., a health charity avoiding terms like “cancer”). Implement a new pixel not linked to restricted domains and consider using multiple clean pixels for different domains.
• Request a Meta review – If you believe your categorisation is incorrect, submit a manual review request. This is particularly useful if the only flagged term is in your brand name, as human reviewers can better assess context than automated systems.
• Leverage first-party data – Build custom and lookalike audiences using first-party data and on-platform engagement to maintain effective targeting.
• Explore alternative ad platforms – Since Meta relies on advertisers, if these changes impact your effectiveness, consider testing other platforms that may yield better results.

If you need assistance adapting your paid media strategy to these changes, Arkyard is here to help. Feel free to reach out to harrison@arkyard.com.