Facebook question: How can I create an ad targeted at people interested in myalgic encephalomyelitis or Chronic fatigue syndrome?

Facebook question:
How can I create an ad targeted at people interested in myalgic encephalomyelitis or Chronic fatigue syndrome? I was previously able to use the following headings: Alternative names for chronic fatigue syndrome, cfs or Chronic fatigue syndrome awareness. However they no longer work.

I did post a question in the help section but they seem to be designed for other users to answer and I got no response.

A Facebook employee lets me use some of her free credit. A lot of what I've used it for is to highlight appeals for research participants.

 

As far as I can see, you can create audiences targeted by interest, but you're limited to the interests listed on facebook (which are general topics only and CFS is not among them) You can't input custom tags, unfortunately.

 

Having had a look, my guess would be that you'd need to go for people who like your page and their friends. I know up until recently, if I'm remembering correctly, you could target people who liked other pages, but I don't see that option any more.

 

That might be okay for some things. But a lot of things are to do with a particular locality and radius around it and the numbers satisfying this would be low. Also you would hope you would reach some of them for free.

 

Maybe they've made it harder to target people due to the recent FB scandals?

 

Well this issue is going back over 7 months anyway.

 

I don't think it's possible. There's a general philosophy about selling ads that these shouldn't be targeted to "sensitive" information, which mostly includes health items (though certain health stuff is considered ok; I am not sure why, though that link goes into it a bit).

This doesn't mean this information is not being collected into elaborate (but not necessarily correct) profiles for marketers to use. Just that they don't normally send health things as ads (though i have gotten some for something I deemed sensitive--but it must have been on someone's "not sensitive" list with arthritis and I don't know what else).

Even if one looks through one's own interest lists (I have tried this other places but not Facebook), there generally won't be any illness-specific things there to select "I am interested in myalgic encephalomyelitis or chronic fatigue syndrome."

 

As I said, I was previously able to use the following headings: Alternative names for chronic fatigue syndrome, cfs or Chronic fatigue syndrome awareness. I used these in dozens of targeted ads.

For any doubting Thomas:

 

But you could be right, @WillowJ, in a way: they may have changed the system for the reason you give.

 

Ah, sorry; I didn’t know what you meant by heading.

I am not sure then. As I mentioned, it’s a bit obscure to me what is included in “sensitive” or “not sensitive” diagnoses.

Also the advertising guidelines are voluntary. It’s possible Facebook didn’t follow them before, but now decided to (but this is just a guess).

I suppose it’s also possible that they previously thought it was a “lesser”/“general” condition and then realized not.

Found your post in the middle of writing mine, Tom, and looks like you’re guessing these kinds of things, too.

Pretty sure when I used to use Facebook they would advertise Teitelbaum‘s book to me (I forgot that last night: wasn’t impressed with this ad), so others in addition to you must have used to have a way.

It’s also of course possible they just moved/changed the way to do things, because, Facebook. But if this were the case I think they’d be willing to answer with how to do it (and they might not be happy to explain if it was that they suddenly decided to follow a common voluntary guideline).