Meta Expands Support for Third-Party Ad Placement Blocklists | SocialMediaToday February 2025

Meta’s looking to give advertisers more control over their ad placements, via an expansion of its support for third-party blocklists.

Blocklists created by brand safety and measurement providers make it easier for brands to ensure that their ads are not displayed next to potentially disagreeable content, while also taking out the manual effort of searching and excluding certain profiles and/​or categories themselves.

Meta announced initial support for blocklists from partner provider IAS last October, and now, it’s expanding that to include blocklists from DoubleVerify and Zefr as well.

As per Meta:

“Ensuring brand safety and suitability through our robust suite of tools for advertisers continues to be a priority for Meta, and we continue to invest in this area. After initial testing with IAS, we have been working with all existing brand safety and suitability Meta Business Partners to give businesses even more control over where their ads appear in Facebook and Instagram Feed and Reels.”

Meta says that advertisers will be able to work directly with IAS, DoubleVerify and Zefr to determine which specific categories they may want to block.

“These decisions happen directly between businesses and their chosen Meta Business Partner, because businesses should ultimately decide what their own suitability preferences are.”

Meta further notes that approved partners are able to create blocklists for any category, as long as they adhere to the Meta’s Discriminatory Practices policy, and that all reporting remains consistent with its established standards.

“These content blocklists are intended to provide advertisers with extra peace of mind, ensuring they have more precision in avoiding adjacent content that may not be suitable for their brand. This solution can be layered on top of Meta’s existing inventory filter or used independently.”

The expanded option will give marketers more control over their ad placements, via the additional assurance of Meta’s partner providers who’ll be able to work with them to create more customized, comprehensive block lists.

It’ll also mean that only approved Meta ads experts are being used to implement these lists, which should ensure better results, both for brands and Meta alike. Because sometimes, blocks and blocklists can go too far, limiting the potential of your ad sets.

This expanded solution should address these concerns, while still meeting advertiser demands. 

You can read more about Meta’s blocklist changes here.