Meta Health & Wellness Restrictions: What Works and What Doesn’t?

Recently, a lot of people have been asking me about how we can fix health and wellness restrictions. Aimerce has been helping with more than 50+ brands within this restriction and helps them revive their Meta performance.

Here are a few scenarios that we have observed and maybe this will be helpful for you to self-diagnose.

Restriction level 1: Core setup is on, but lower funnel events are not being received.

How to self-diagnose?

1. Click on Manage data source categories

You will see a “Triangle Warning Sign” right next to your domain, not a “Stop Sign”. In this case, your domain is only partially blocked by certain parameters.

2. Count the purchases in Events Manager in the past days and compare them to Shopify.

Has the purchase been tracked correctly? If it is correct, then you are in this Level 1 restriction.

How to fix?

From our experience, it doesn't really affect performance. A lot of brands have core setup on for months and it seems to be fine. All you need to do is set up custom events as backup, just in case the restrictions get worse. But in general, no immediate action is required.

Restriction level 2: Lower funnel events are NOT received but top of funnel is still good.

How to self-diagnose?

1. Click on Manage data source categories

You will see a red “Stop Sign” right next to your domain. In this case, your lower funnel events are blocked.

2. Count the purchases in Events Manager in the past days and compare to Shopify.

Has the purchase been tracked correctly? If you are missing a significant number of purchases compared to Shopify, you are probably in Level 2 restriction.

How to fix?

Custom events is the solution. Meta has officially announced that properly registered and compliant custom events are still accepted and operational in their targeting algorithm. This is one way to get your lower-level conversion events back.

Things to look out for during implementation

1. Make sure that you don’t rename your customer events the exact same as your standard events

2. Make sure you verify them by manually going through the flow in Meta Events Manager

3. Once you’ve done this, the custom events will be unblocked by Meta

Aimerce provides a toggle to turn on Health & Wellness custom events with one-click. Most of people see performance coming back within 1-2 weeks.

Restriction level 3: EU regional restriction with all events being blocked.

How to self-diagnose?

1. Click on Manage data source categories

You will see a red “Stop Sign” right next to your domain. In this case, your lower funnel events are blocked.

2. Page View and View Content in Events Manager in the past days and compare to Shopify.

Are the top-of-funnel events being tracked correctly? Did traffic drop drastically? Did custom events not work? Those are all signals that you have an EU regional restriction.

How to fix?

Custom events is NOT the solution in this case. There's no way you are able to achieve proper event tracking without changing the domain. Changing the domain is a temporary solution, obviously, because the new domain is still at risk of being restricted again. But this will temporarily unblock you.

We've been helping with so many brands in this category, and we have seen all kinds of scenarios. Happy to take a look at things for you and propose a solution.

✌️Here to help you win,

Yiqi