If your business advertises on Facebook or Instagram, there’s a recent update worth knowing about. As of June 22nd, Meta has replaced Nielsen Designated Market Areas (DMAs) with Comscore Markets for location targeting and reporting across all ad accounts.
What Changed?
For years, Facebook used Nielsen DMAs to organize geographic markets. These regions were originally based on county data and created for traditional advertising avenues like television and radio.
Now, Meta is using Comscore Markets instead. Comscore uses a more modern approach, focusing on zip codes rather than counties, and incorporates data from both traditional and digital media to define local markets. This creates market boundaries that better reflect how people consume media today.
Why Does It Matter?
Most businesses won’t notice a major change to their campaigns. Your ads will still reach the audiences you choose, and your reports will continue to show performance by market. The difference is that Meta is now using updated market definitions designed to provide more accurate and up-to-date location reporting and targeting over time.
Do You Need to Do Anything?
For most advertisers, your campaigns should continue running as expected. However, if you regularly review location reports or compare historical campaign performance, you may notice some differences in market names or reporting going forward.
If you are currently running an ad campaign targeting DMAs specifically, instead of zipcodes or cities, then Facebook has automatically paused your campaign. In order for the campaign to go live again, you will need to update your location targeting to Comscore Markets or another location targeting option.
How We Can Help
Digital marketing platforms are constantly evolving, and updates like this happen more often than many businesses realize. Our team can help your clients stay on top of these changes so you don’t have to. Whether it’s a platform update, a new advertising feature, or changing best practices, we’re here to help keep your marketing moving in the right direction.
