How to Select Special Ad Category Facebook for Real Estate & Credit
If you have ever run a standard Facebook Ads campaign, the process is likely very familiar: create a campaign, select your audience, set up image or video ad creatives, then turn on the ads and track the results. With special ad categories, the method is basically the same. The difference lies in the fact that we must clearly declare the industry category to which the ad belongs, so that Facebook can apply the appropriate rules.
Currently, almost everyone can advertise on Facebook, Instagram, and even Threads. However, due to strict requirements regarding privacy and social fairness, certain fields will be more restricted in targeting and ad distribution. Facebook refers to these fields as Special ad categories, including industries such as real estate, credit, employment, and other sensitive sectors.
For this reason, BlackHatWorld will work with you to clarify whether your business falls under a special ad category. Additionally, we will provide detailed instructions on where to set this up when creating campaigns for real estate and credit, helping advertisers understand the current restrictions, why they exist, and how they directly affect your Facebook ad campaign performance.
Do Special Ad Categories really affect Real Estate and Credit Agencies?
Many advertisers, especially real estate agencies and financial entities, often worry that selecting the Special Ad Category will make campaigns less effective, increase costs, or even leave no way to target the right customers. In fact, this category does have an impact, but not in the negative way many people think. The important thing is that you need to clearly understand how Meta evaluates and distributes ads in these sensitive industries.
What does Meta rely on to determine if an ad belongs to a Special Category?
Whether you mark it yourself or not, Meta will still automatically analyze your ads based on three core factors:
- Landing page: If the landing page contains content about selling houses, home loans, personal loan registrations, insurance, or financial services, the system will identify it very quickly.
- Creative: Images of housing, financial charts, elements related to loans, interest rates, insurance, or investment are all clear signals for the algorithm.
- Content: Phrases such as “buy a house”, “loan”, “low interest rates”, “application approval”, or “financial funding” are all within the sensitive keyword group.
If just one of the three factors above violates the rules and you do not classify the ad into a special category, the campaign is very likely to be rejected or have its distribution restricted. This is also one of the reasons why Facebook ad accounts are disabled on Facebook. Therefore, we always advise advertisers to proactively classify and enable it right from the start.
Do Financial Products and Services necessarily belong to Special Ad Categories?
The answer is yes, if you are promoting content such as:
- Credit cards
- Loan services or long-term financing
- Payment services
- Insurance and related financial products
However, not every money-related service is classified into this category. For example, gift cards, tax services, accounting, or retail store loyalty programs are not required to select a special ad category.
Scope of applying Special Ad Categories for the Real Estate niches
For the housing sector, as long as your ad is related to selling, renting, or introducing any type of housing, you will almost certainly have to select a special ad category. This includes services closely related to housing finance, such as:
- Renter’s insurance
- Mortgage insurance
- Home purchase financing
- Home equity extraction
- Real estate brokerage and consulting services
All of the above cases are classified by Meta as special ad categories. Conversely, verified hotels, resorts, or vacation rentals do not fall within this scope, as they are not considered long-term housing.
Do Special Ad Categories really negatively affect ad campaigns?
The point that frustrates many advertisers the most is the limitation on interest-based targeting. When you select a special ad category, in the Detailed Targeting section, many previously available options will no longer be accessible.
For example, previously, you could target interests related to health, personal finance, financial education, or home-buying behavior. But when running ads in a special category, Meta will automatically remove many of these audience groups to avoid discrimination or unfair targeting.
This means you lose detailed control over the audience, but this is not the end of ad effectiveness. When you categorize ads correctly, Meta does not “abandon” your campaign. On the contrary, they will use reference audience groups already built into the algorithm for each sensitive category.
For example, with Financial products and services, Facebook already has large datasets of user behaviors qualified to see this type of ad. The four special categories are very strictly managed because, in the past, there were too many cases of false promises, scam ads, or fraud.
Therefore, even if you cannot target as precisely as before, Facebook still distributes ads to the most suitable groups of people within the allowed scope. If the creative and message are good enough, you can still absolutely generate quality leads, reasonable costs, and maintain sustainable profit.
How to Select Special Ad Category Facebook for Real Estate & Credit
To help you visualize clearly and avoid errors when setting up a campaign, we will go step-by-step right inside the Facebook Ads Manager. If you are an advertiser in the real estate or credit sector, this is a part you must master thoroughly before running ads.
Start creating a campaign and select Special Ad Category
We enter Ads Manager and begin creating a new campaign. At the objective selection step, you can choose any suitable objective, such as Lead, Traffic, or Conversion. Then click Continue and choose Manual setup.
Right in the campaign settings section, when scrolling down a bit, you will see the Special Ad Category area. This is exactly where you need to determine if your business belongs to one of the special ad categories. For real estate or credit advertisers, you are required to check the correct corresponding category.
Selection is very simple. You just need to open the dropdown menu and select one of the four category groups defined by Meta. After that, the system will ask to confirm the country or region of operation. Typically, Meta will automatically select the country based on the ad account settings. However, we advise you to double-check to ensure the information is accurate, especially if you run ads in multiple markets.
Set up ad sets to avoid campaign restrictions
After completing the category selection step and clicking Next to move to the ad group, you continue the setup like a regular campaign: choose the optimization event, budget, and schedule. However, the biggest difference lies in the Audience section.
When belonging to a special ad category, Facebook applies a series of limits to ensure fairness and non-discrimination. The first example is gender. If you scroll down to the gender section, you will see a notification stating that you cannot select male or female separately. This means the ad must be displayed to everyone and cannot be excluded based on gender.
Next is age. You are required to keep the range from 18 to 65+, as you cannot narrow the age group like regular campaigns. Meta will also display a notice explaining the reason clearly right below to ensure the ad does not cause discrimination.
Geographic location settings and targeting for Special Ad Categories
In the location section, you can still select by country, state, or large region. However, with special ad categories, you are not allowed to target by specific ZIP codes or postal codes. You can still enter a specific location, but the surrounding radius must be at least 15 miles. We used to implement hyper-local campaigns for customers attending fairs or events within a radius of only 1 mile. However, that method is completely unavailable when running real estate or credit ads within special categories.
Regarding language, you can still adjust it as usual. However, when it comes to detailed targeting, you will start to see clear differences. Many interests, behaviors, or purchasing trends will no longer be displayed. For a specific example, if in a regular Facebook housing ads campaign you could target people interested in buying, selling, and renting houses or any house-related services, when returning to a campaign that has selected a special ad category and searching for those same keywords, you will see no results appear. This does not happen with every query, but it forces advertisers to change their mindset from detailed targeting to a broader reach.
Additionally, Facebook does not allow for detailed audience exclusion in special ad categories. This makes it impossible for you to “filter” audiences as deeply as before, requiring you to rely more on Meta’s distribution algorithm.
Use Audience Files (if any) and Publish ads
If your account already has saved audience files from previous campaigns, you can still use them. However, Meta will automatically adjust them to comply with age, gender, and location restrictions. The same applies to new custom audiences. Specialized lookalike options for special ad categories that existed previously were removed by Meta several years ago.
After completing the targeting section, you simply continue creating the ad as usual: select the fanpage, Instagram account, ad content, and display format. Technically, this step is almost no different from regular Meta Ads campaigns. Just ensure all settings comply with policies, and you can fully publish the campaign and start generating leads for real estate or credit in a valid, safe, and sustainable manner.
Choosing the right special ad category on Facebook is a mandatory requirement for advertisers in the real estate and credit sectors. By clearly understanding the limitations on age, gender, location, and detailed targeting, we believe you can completely build policy-compliant campaigns that still generate quality leads. Instead of trying to “bypass the rules,” focus on creatives, messaging, and the lead processing workflow behind the scenes to optimize long-term and sustainable effectiveness.
Frequently asked questions
Yes, it matters. If Facebook detects that your ad belongs to a mandatory sector but is not marked with the correct category, the campaign may be rejected, experience restricted distribution, or even affect the trust score of your ad account.
Yes, if you do it right. By focusing on appropriate messaging, clear creatives, and a good lead conversion process, real estate and credit campaigns can still generate quality leads at a reasonable cost, despite targeting limitations.
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