GoSocial

Meta Ads — Off-platform activity opt-out is going away

Meta is retiring a privacy control that's been around for years. Starting this month, the "Your activity off Meta technologies" opt-out disappears.

Here's what it did. It lets people disconnect their off-platform activity, the stuff your Pixel and Conversions API send Meta, from their Meta account. Once that opt-out goes, everyone who had switched it on re-enters the signal pool.

Meta says no new data is being collected. This is about how existing data gets used, not what's gathered. But for advertisers, the practical effect is real. Retargeting audiences that had shrunk due to opt-outs should widen. Lookalike quality should improve too, since the underlying signal pool just got bigger.

One thing worth being careful about. This is Meta handing every account a boost at once, not something your account specifically earned. If reach or match quality ticks up after the rollout, don't credit it to your own optimisation work. Everyone gets the same lift.

Practical move: keep an eye on CPMs, reach, and conversion rates on your retargeting and Lookalike campaigns from August onward, once the rollout has fully landed. That's when you'll see the real shift in the data.

Want a read on how this affects your account specifically? gosocialgb.com/qualification/

If you're using standalone call ads to generate phone leads, this one's for you.

Since February 2026, Google Ads no longer lets you create new call ads. Existing ones will keep running for now, but they'll stop serving entirely by February 2027.

This catches a lot of local service businesses off guard, because call ads have quietly been the backbone of their lead gen for years. Plumbers, dentists, tradespeople, anyone who wants the phone to ring rather than a form filled in.

The fix isn't complicated. Add your phone number as a call asset within a responsive search ad instead. You still get the click-to-call button, you still get call tracking, and your ad keeps serving well past the 2027 cutoff.

The advertisers who'll struggle are the ones who leave this until their call ads actually stop delivering. Migrate now, while there's no pressure and no leads are lost in the meantime.

If phone leads are a big part of your account, it's worth an audit before this becomes urgent.

gosocialgb.com/qualification/