Meta plans to deprecate and remove certain Detailed Targeting interests, impacting existing ad sets in Advertise. As of December 15, 2025, Advertise will stop supporting the deprecated interests and they will not be available to select in new ad sets. As of January 15, 2026, Meta will stop supporting the deprecated interests and any ad sets containing them will stop running in Advertise.
In this article, find details about the upcoming changes and see what actions you need to take to update your ad sets before the deprecation on January 15, 2026.
In this article:
What is changing?
Meta is deprecating a large number of Detailed Targeting interest options. Between December 15, 2025 and January 15, 2026, Brandwatch is transitioning to Meta’s new API. Meta will fully deprecate and no longer support the impacted interests on January 15, meaning any ad sets in Advertise that still contain them will no longer function as of that date.
- From December 15, 2025, you will not be able to select any of the deprecated interests when creating a new ad set in Advertise.
- For existing ad sets, Brandwatch will automatically flag any ad sets containing unsupported interests with an orange triangle notice icon starting December 15. You must manually re-select your interests for these ad sets prior to January 15, 2026.
- If you do not update any ad sets containing unsupported interests prior to January 15, they will fail to go live.
- Please be aware that this deprecation will also impact Saved Audiences and Auto-boost rules containing deprecated interests, though currently we can only provide in-product notifications for deprecated interests in manual targeting. See our FAQs below for more information on action needed for interest deprecation in Saved Audiences and timeline expectations for interest deprecation in auto-boost rules.
A new Needs attention filter will be available in your ad set filters to easily find all your ad sets that will need to be updated.
Which ad sets need to be updated?
You will only need to update ad sets that run beyond January 15, 2026.
If an ad set stops before January 15, it will run normally and will not need editing unless you plan to extend it.
We recommend focusing on updating your ad sets that are:
- Currently live and scheduled to run past January 15
- Planned to remain live
- Likely to be extended
Updating the Detailed Targeting interests in your ad sets
To update your ad sets to select new interests:
- In your Ad Sets list in Advertise, you will see any ad sets that need updating flagged with an orange triangle notice icon.
- Under Actions to the right of an ad set, click the three dots icon and select Edit ad set.
- You will see the Targeting step flagged. Click the pencil icon next to it to edit your targeting.
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Click the Target Manually tab, and you will see your impacted targeting options flagged. Any impacted interests that Meta will deprecate will be outlined in red. De-select any unsupported interests outlined in red and re-select your interests.
Note:
Please be aware that when selecting new interests for your ad set, changing targeting will also change your estimated audience size, potentially the cost, as well as the Estimated Reach metric for your ads.
- Click Save Changes in the top-right corner of the ad set editor to confirm your changes.
FAQs
Do we know which Detailed Targeting Interests are affected?
No, Meta has not provided a full list of the impacted interests, though they are a vast number. Brandwatch has validated every ad set via Meta’s validation API to identify the deprecated interests in our users’ ad sets.
Will Saved Audiences be impacted?
Yes, Saved Audiences will be impacted if they contain any deprecated interests. As of December 15, creation of ad sets using Saved Audiences that contain deprecated interests will not be possible. When creating a new ad set, you will be informed in the final step of the creation process if you attempt to use a Saved Audience with deprecated interests. If this happens, please go to the Targeting panel, click the pencil icon to edit your targeting, and remove any interests outlined in red that are deprecated.
At this time, existing ad sets will not return a notification if your Saved Audiences contain deprecated interests. We are working to provide validation of Saved Audiences with deprecated interests in January. This solution will provide Saved Audience validation where you will immediately see if a Saved Audience you have picked for an existing ad set contains deprecated interests, allowing you to identify and edit any existing ad sets that are impacted.
Will auto-boost rules be impacted?
Yes, auto-boost rules containing deprecated interests will be affected. Between December 15 and January 6, auto-boost rules containing deprecated interests will still trigger, but they will create invalid ad sets and require manual updating if the ad set is meant to run after January 15 or will be extended to run after January 15.
From January 6, any auto-boost rules containing deprecated interests will fail to trigger. If you have a failed rule, you will receive an email specifying the failed rule, ad set, and channel and instructions to delete the rule and recreate a new one. We do not currently support editing for existing auto-boost rules.
Can I update my auto-boost rules prior to January 6?
To allow auto-boost rules to run through the 2025 holiday season, auto-boost rule updating will not be available until January.
Why can't the ad set updates automatically be done by Brandwatch?
New interest selection must be done manually on behalf of the user because changing targeting will also change your estimated audience size, potentially the cost, as well as the Estimated Reach metric for your ads. For security and transparency, we require you to acknowledge and accept the changes you are applying to your ad sets.