The owner of a tutoring school opens a Meta page one evening out of curiosity. He types in the name of the tutoring school next door. He sees the ads it has run over the past year: what they said, when they appeared, which ages, gender and areas they were aimed at, how many people they reached.
Then he types in the name of his own school. And he realises the school next door can do exactly the same.
Advertising on Facebook and Instagram is not what it was a few years ago. In the European Union the rules have changed, and with them what others can see, who you can reach and what you are allowed to advertise. Here you will find which of these changes matter to a small business. We explain what happens when Facebook closes or “freezes” your page itself in the article “Your Facebook page is not a website”.
Your ads are public
The Digital Services Act (DSA, Regulation (EU) 2022/2065) requires very large platforms to keep a public archive of all the ads they show (Article 39). For each ad, the archive shows, among other things, on whose behalf it was shown, when, whether it was aimed at particular people and on what criteria (e.g. age, location), and how many people it reached. The ad stays in the archive for one year after it was last shown.
For Facebook and Instagram, this archive is Meta’s Ad Library, which since August 2023 has shown all ads in the EU, not just political ones.
What this means in practice: your ad is not a secret between you and the customers who see it. The text, the image, the ages and areas you chose are all visible to anyone who looks.
The customer sees why it appeared
The same regulation requires that, for every ad a user sees, they can tell immediately that it is an ad, on whose behalf it is shown, who paid for it, if that is someone other than the advertiser shown, and on what main criteria it was chosen to appear to them (Article 26(1)).
So your customer can see that your ad appeared because they are, say, 35 to 50 years old and live near you. If the criteria you chose for who sees the ad (what is called targeting) are reasonable, this need not worry you. If they are very specific or odd, the customer will see that too.
Some people you can no longer reach selectively
Two of the regulation’s prohibitions directly affect anyone who sets up campaigns.
Sensitive data. Platforms may not choose who sees an ad based on sensitive data such as health, religion, political opinions or sexual orientation (Article 26(3)). A physiotherapy clinic, for example, cannot show its ad only to “people with lower back pain”. Meta had already removed options like this in 2022.
Minors. Platforms may not choose who sees an ad based on a person’s interests and behaviour when they know with reasonable certainty that the person is a minor (Article 28(2)). Since February 2023, and worldwide, Meta has let advertisers use only age and location for teenagers aged 13 to 17. For a tutoring school or a shop selling to teenagers, this means the ad reaches teenagers much less selectively than before.
Ads about social issues no longer run
This is the change that surprises most people, because it does not seem to concern a business.
Since early October 2025 Meta has stopped running ads in the EU about political, electoral and social issues. The reason, as Meta itself explains it, is the new EU regulation on the transparency and targeting of political advertising, which has applied since 10/10/2025. Meta says its requirements cannot be applied in practice.
The problem for a business is the word “social”. Meta counts among these issues the environment, health, civil and social rights and immigration. An ad for solar panels that talks about climate change, or an ad for a medical practice that mentions a prevention campaign, may be judged to touch on a social issue and be rejected, even if it is simply selling something. European civil society organisations have protested precisely about this: that Meta’s decision catches far more than politics.
There is no list that tells you for certain what will get through. There is, however, a way to write an ad so that it talks about the product and not the social issue, and it is learned in practice.
From 2026, less data
The last change does not come from the DSA but from the Digital Markets Act (DMA). In April 2025 the European Commission found that Meta’s “pay or consent” model, in which the user either paid a subscription or consented to their data being used for ads tailored to them, did not comply with the regulation, because there was no option using less personal data. It fined Meta 200 million euros. After Meta committed to changing the model, from January 2026 users in the EU can choose to share less data and see ads chosen with less information about them.
For you this means that, for part of your audience, the platform chooses who sees the ad with less information. How large that part is, nobody outside Meta knows. That is why the platform’s numbers can no longer be compared like for like with older campaigns.
What all this means
None of this makes advertising on Facebook useless. But the ground it stands on has changed. What you write and who you aim at, your competitor sees too. An ad can be rejected for a reason that has nothing to do with what you sell. And the platform’s numbers no longer tell the whole story. Whether a campaign brings in customers is judged outside the platform, as we explain in the article “The post got three hundred likes. How many came to the site?”.
I am not a lawyer. These rules change, and the platforms change their own policies even more often. Before an important campaign, it is worth checking what applies at that moment.
The school next door can see too
The owner of the tutoring school closes the library page. He will not stop advertising. But he will write every ad knowing that both his customers and the school next door are reading it.
If you advertise on Facebook and Instagram and do not know whether your campaigns bring in customers or just spend money, we look at them with you. We tell you in writing what we found and what is worth changing. See the Google & Social Ads service, or send us the link to your Facebook page and what you advertise through the form.
The whole picture: this article covers one part of a larger subject. If you are after the whole of it, from beginning to end, it is in the guide to your business on social media.
