Brands rely on accurate conversion data to optimize their ads, and brands in the Health & Wellness space now face big limitations with data sharing on Meta, which began in January 2025.
Advertisers are no longer able to track bottom-of-funnel events (like conversions) if the brand account itself is labelled as a Health & Wellness brand on Meta. Additionally, they aren’t able to build an audience based on conversion events. This means that advertisers will need to get creative with how they advertise products in this sector.
Triple Whale brands, however, will still maintain visibility into the entire funnel, even when Meta restricts visibility into lower funnel conversions. For certain brands that don’t fall into the most restrictive category, Sonar custom events can offer a way to send and optimize towards other conversions than the standard Meta events.
It’s a defensive mechanism from Meta to protect against exposure for promoting false health claims or sharing sensitive personal data. Meta considers customer purchases of health products and/or remedies as ‘health data’, so if you are tracking the purchase of such a product and sending that information back to Meta, it would violate HIPAA under their advertising policy.
Any brand that is categorized by Meta as a Health & Wellness brand is affected. According to Meta, a Health & Wellness brand is “associated with medical conditions, specific health statuses, or provider/patient relationships (for example, a patient portal or wellness tracker for depression).”
If a data source falls under a category with restrictions, Meta now limits or or fully restricts the ability to share event data with Meta using Meta Business Tools. If this restriction exists for an advertiser, they will be informed via email as well as via a notification in Meta Events Manager. In the case of Health & Wellness, this means a restriction on bottom-of-funnel events, as well as the types of audiences you can target.
1) Check if your brand is listed as Health & Wellness in Events Manager
Inside Events Manager under Settings, a brand can see if their data source category has been listed under Health & Wellness (or any other restricted category). If this classification is incorrect, the brand should reach out to their Meta representative directly to appeal.
2) Ensure that data sources in Meta Events Manager are appropriately categorized.
If the categorization is inaccurate, brands can ask Meta to review it again. Keep in mind that an appeal may take a long period of time, and might not always result in the brand’s favor.
3) Shift advertising focus to upper-funnel events.
As there will be restrictions on specific mid- and lower-funnel events, Meta recommends advertisers shift focus to upper-funnel events in order to maintain effective audience targeting and campaign optimization. While ads targeting the bottom-of-funnel events would still run, they would likely decline in efficiency and effectiveness over time if the restricted standard event is required for campaign targeting, optimization, or measurement.
Triple Whale will continue to provide bottom-of-funnel reporting and conversion data via our onsite Pixel, as UTMs are unaffected. With this information, advertisers will still be able to make actionable decisions based on how campaigns are performing.
While advertisers will lose efficacy for Facebook campaigns on Meta, they’d be able to keep and track efficacy in Triple Whale.
Using our Customer Data Platform, advertisers can create audiences to sync with Meta for better targeting.
Ads on Meta will need to switch to a top-of-funnel focus, and in the Health & Wellness space this will mean broad audience targeting. Brands will also have to adapt ad copy and content to get creative with it, and avoid symptom-related terminology that Meta will no longer accept.
Sonar Custom Events for Meta are specialized purchase events that are tracked by Triple Whale, and sent back to Meta through CAPI. These events can focus on specific customer actions, providing deeper insights into custom behavior. These can include new customer purchases, returning customer purchases, or initial subscription purchases.
Since Meta has restricted the ability to see bottom-of-funnel conversion like purchases inside the Meta platform, Sonar presents an opportunity to transfer the data Triple Whale tracks back to Meta, to fill in the gaps. However, there are several restrictions to this functionality, and the ability to use it will depend on the shop’s categorization according to Meta.
Some advertisers may have a data source categorization resulting in data sharing being fully restricted. In this case, custom events will also be blocked.
Health & Wellness brands that don’t fall into the most restrictive category can create Sonar Custom Events as a way to send and optimize towards other conversions besides the standard Meta events.
When an advertiser’s website or app using a Meta Business Tool is categorized under a category that may have certain data sharing restrictions, they will receive alerts via email and in product notifications. If these data sources fall under a category that requires restrictions (such as core setup treatment), all their custom events must be registered in Events Manager, or they will be dropped. This will not impact custom events that are already being sent before a data source is categorized.
For any custom events, advertisers must ensure that the event should not directly or indirectly share prohibited information. Meta has, and will continue to, detect and filter out custom events that appear potentially sensitive, regardless of what data restrictions are applied to a data source.
In summary, Sonar Custom Events are allowed as long as these guidelines are followed:
Are you a Health & Wellness brand hoping to get ahead of this change in January? Book a demo today to see how we can help.
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