Meta drops fact checks, PMax takes negatives

Three things have landed in the first three weeks of January, and each one touches an account we run. One is a content policy story owners keep asking us about. One is a rule that takes effect on Monday and that a lot of the lead forms we look at are not ready for. One is a small Google Ads feature we have wanted for about three years.

Here they are in the order they should change your week.

Meta is ending third-party fact checking

On 7 January Meta said it is winding down its third-party fact-checking program and replacing it with Community Notes written and rated by users, across Facebook and Instagram, and on Threads. It also said it is loosening some content rules and moving parts of its trust and safety work.

Since then we have had two versions of the same question from owners: does this change what I am allowed to advertise, and does it make the feed a worse place for my business to be.

The first answer is no. Ad policies are a separate rulebook from content moderation, and the rulebook that gets a med spa ad rejected over a before-and-after photo or a dental ad rejected over a health claim has not moved. If you advertise in a sensitive category, keep writing the way you were writing in December.

The second answer is genuinely wait and see, and two weeks of feed is not evidence. What we are doing in the meantime:

• Watching comment threads more closely. The comments under a local ad are part of the ad. We keep a blocked word list on every ad account and we read the threads on whichever campaign is spending the most.
• Keeping creative plain. Real photos of real staff and real rooms, a clear offer, no engagement bait. Nothing this month changes what makes a local ad book work.
• Not moving budget on a headline. The people booking cleanings and bathroom remodels are on the same apps they were on last month.

The lead consent rule takes effect Monday

The FCC rule adopted in December 2023 on consent for marketing calls and texts takes effect on 27 January. There is a legal challenge to it and no ruling has come, so we are planning for it to be live on Monday.

Two parts matter for a local business:

1. One seller at a time. Consent has to name a single business. A checkbox that hands a phone number to a list of unnamed “partners” does not count as consent for any of them.
2. Topically related. What you call or text about has to be logically and topically associated with the interaction where the person gave consent. A roof quote form is not consent to text about gutters six months later.

If you generate your own leads on your own form, this is housekeeping rather than an emergency. If you buy shared leads from a vendor, it is not housekeeping, and the question to send them this week is simple: show me the consent language on the form my leads come from, and show me what you store when somebody submits it.

Here is what we check on every form we manage before Monday:

• The business is named in the consent line, in plain words, not in a link behind “partners”.
• The box is not pre-ticked, and the form still works if somebody leaves it unticked. Consent to marketing texts is not allowed to be the price of getting a quote.
• The exact consent wording, the timestamp, the page URL and the IP are stored on the contact record, not just in a screenshot of the form somebody took last year.
• The stop keyword works, and an opt-out on text also stops the automated follow-up sequence, which is where we usually find the leak.
• Recall requests and reactivation campaigns to old lists are reviewed, because a list from four years ago is where the risk sits, not the form you filled out yesterday.

Performance Max finally takes negative keywords

Google said in November that campaign-level negative keywords were coming to Performance Max early this year, and they are showing up in accounts now. Until this week the options were account-level negatives, brand exclusions, or asking a rep to load a list for you.

This is the change with the fastest payback of the three. Start with the search terms and search categories the campaign has already spent on, then add, in this order:

1. Jobs and careers. Every local account we audit is paying for people who want to work there.
2. Services you do not offer. The practice that does not place implants, the contractor who does not touch roofs. These are the most expensive clicks in the account because they convert into calls you have to turn down.
3. Free, cheap and DIY research phrases, where the intent is a YouTube video rather than an appointment.
4. Your own brand, but only if you run a separate brand campaign and you want the two to stop competing. If you do not, leave it.
5. Anything that produced a call your front desk had to refuse. Ask them. They remember.

A caution, because we have watched people overdo this in week one: Performance Max still does not show you everything, negatives do not fix geography, and cutting a third of the traffic on day one makes the next two weeks unreadable. Add a list, wait a week, look at booked work rather than conversions, then add the next list.

What to do this month

• Pull the last 90 days of Performance Max search terms, mark the ones you would refuse, and load them as campaign-level negatives. Diary a review for seven days later.
• Read your own lead form as a stranger before Monday. One named business, an unticked box, plain wording, a form that still submits without consent.
• Check that your CRM is storing the consent text and timestamp on the contact record, and test that a stop reply actually stops the sequence.
• Email every lead vendor you buy from and ask what their form says now.
• Read the comment threads under your two highest spending ads and top up the blocked word list.
• Leave your ad creative and your offers alone. Nothing that changed this month requires a rewrite.

January is the month people act on a benefits reset, a new year and a broken tooth, so this is not the month to rebuild everything. Tighten the Meta ads you already run, add the negatives your Google Ads account has been waiting for, and make sure the consent wording on your form is stored with the lead inside your CRM rather than living only on the page.