Helping Prevent Discrimination in Ads that Offer Housing, Employment or Credit Opportunities

Update on September 28, 2021: Starting today, the changes previously announced in the US and Canada will begin rolling out in Europe. We will begin enforcement in December across all of the tools businesses use to buy ads, including Ads Manager App, Instagram Promote, the Marketing API and ads created from your Facebook Page.

Update on January 15, 2020: Today, we’re announcing that the changes made on December 3, 2019, in the U.S. will roll out to Canada by late 2020. We’ll have more details to share in the coming months, but at a high level these measures include:

• Restricting the ability for advertisers to target ads that offer housing, employment and credit opportunities based on age, gender, postal code, or any other detailed options describing or appearing to relate to protected characteristics, and expanding enforcement of these restrictions across all the tools businesses use to buy ads.
• Providing access to all employment, housing and credit opportunity ads in the Ad Library, so it will be easy to search for and view all such active ads targeted to Canada, regardless of whether you are in the advertiser’s intended audience. Ads that offer housing, employment and credit opportunities targeted to Canada will be included in the Ad Library later this year.
• Continuing an ongoing dialogue with experts in these matters.

Today, we’re expanding our enforcement of this process across all the tools businesses use to buy ads. We’re also adding a housing ad section in the Ad Library, so it will be easy to search for and view US ads about housing opportunities.

Beginning tomorrow, you’ll be able to search for and view all active housing opportunity ads targeted at the US that started running - or were edited - on or after December 4, 2019, regardless of whether you’re in the advertiser’s intended audience. You’ll be able to search the housing ad section by the name of the Page running an ad or the city or state to which the ad is targeted.

In the next year, we’ll also include ads that offer employment or credit opportunities in the Ad Library. We’re actively working with civil rights groups to inform our approach as we prepare to roll this out.

In August, we announced that advertisers must use the new process with restricted targeting options to buy ads that offer housing, employment or credit opportunities and we began enforcement in Ads Manager. Starting tomorrow, we will begin enforcement across all of the tools businesses use to buy ads, including Ads Manager App, Instagram Promote, the Marketing API and ads created from your Facebook Page.

Learn more about how to manage housing, employment and credit ads in our Advertiser Help Center. You can also view our updated policy on Discriminatory Practices.