Insights from Brett Fish’s Webinar: The Hidden Impacts On Your Account
Why It Matters
Meta’s automated Health & Wellness categorization is quietly reshaping performance for a lot more advertisers than most realize. Once a domain is labeled, bottom-of-funnel events like purchases and add-to-cart can disappear, and across the 300+ categorized accounts Brett Fish has worked with, the pattern is consistently higher CPAs and CPMs, lower conversion rates, and limited delivery. The “Other” subcategory added in mid-2025 widened the net to include businesses only tangentially related to health, appeals succeed just 15-25% of the time, and even winning one doesn’t fully restore past performance. Knowing how the system works, and scrubbing site and event data of health-related language before a flag lands, is far easier than trying to climb out afterward.
Who This Is For
Built for Founders members advertising on Meta in health, wellness, supplements, skincare, finance, or other sensitive-adjacent verticals, plus agencies managing those accounts. Especially relevant if your account has already been categorized, if performance has dipped without a clear cause, or if your products sit close enough to the health space that you could be next.
In a recent webinar, Brett Fish, founder of TagHero, and a recognized expert in ad platform data tracking, provided crucial insights into Meta’s Health and Wellness categorization system and its far-reaching effects on advertisers. Fish, who has worked with hundreds of categorized accounts, addressed the confusion and misinformation surrounding Meta’s new data policies, especially as they relate to businesses in sensitive verticals like health, wellness, and finance.
Background: Why Meta Introduced Categorization
Fish explained that Meta began rolling out categorization in late 2024 largely in response to increased scrutiny and multiple class action lawsuits over data privacy, especially regarding health-related information. The system automatically scans both the data advertisers send and the content on their websites, assigning categories like Health & Wellness Condition, Provider, or Other, and applying data restrictions accordingly.
Notably, once a domain is categorized, all its subdomains fall under the same label, since the categorization is tied directly to the website’s URL. This affects not only ad performance, but also the events and data advertisers can send to Meta’s platform.
What the Categorization Means for Advertisers
According to Fish, the categorization comes with corresponding data restrictions. For example, accounts labeled under Health & Wellness Condition often lose access to bottom-of-funnel events such as purchases, add-to-cart, and lead submissions, which limits advertisers to less intent-driven events like page views. This curtails the ability to optimize for conversions and reduces overall campaign effectiveness.
Meta’s review system is automated, and advertisers often learn about their categorization only through prompts in the Meta Business Manager or Events Manager interfaces. Fish detailed the process for checking categorization and emphasized that Meta's UI explanations don’t always match the real-world effects seen in ad accounts.
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The Ripple Effect: Real-World Impacts
Based on Fish’s experience with over 300 categorized accounts, the impact of categorization is highly variable but consistently negative. Advertisers typically see higher costs per acquisition (CPA) and cost per thousand impressions (CPM), lower conversion rates, and limited ad delivery. These effects occur even for those who retain access to bottom-of-funnel events, suggesting that categorization itself (rather than specific technical restrictions) drives the performance drop.
The Health & Wellness category expanded significantly in mid-2025, when Meta introduced the "Other" subcategory. This broadened the net, pulling in many previously unaffected businesses (even those only tangentially related to health, like bath bomb sellers). Fish noted that even standard solutions, like substituting custom events for blocked standard events (an approach sometimes recommended by Meta’s own account reps), produced inconsistent results.
Addressing the Aftermath and Limited Remedies
Fish acknowledged Meta's lack of transparency about the technical reasons for these outcomes. He described the appeal process for advertisers seeking to remove their categorization, but reported a low success rate (around 15-25%). Even when appeals succeed and restrictions are lifted, Fish’s clients haven’t observed a full return to previous ad performance benchmarks, suggesting a lingering “hangover effect.”
For businesses operating in the health and wellness space, options are limited: either accept the new status quo and optimize within the constraints or pursue an appeal. In some cases, starting a new dataset after a successful appeal may help, but as Fish cautions, the effectiveness of this tactic is not guaranteed.
Practical Advice for Advertisers
To minimize the risk of categorization, Fish recommends proactively scrubbing websites and event data of health-related language and claims wherever possible. He also highlighted the importance of careful domain and product naming, practices that large brands often employ to avoid triggering automated scans.
During the Q&A, Fish fielded questions about the nuances of the categorization process, the variable impact on different types of businesses, the challenges of using custom events, and the best practices for appeals. He emphasized that there are no “magic bullet” solutions and that much of the process remains a “black box,” even to those with extensive experience.
The Outlook for Health & Wellness Advertisers on Meta
Fish concluded that Meta’s categorization policies have made it significantly harder for health and wellness brands to advertise effectively on the platform. While some non-compliant workarounds exist, he stressed that compliant options are limited to content and data adjustments, appeals, or simply adapting to new performance baselines.
Ultimately, Fish’s webinar provided a candid look at the realities of Meta’s automated categorization system, its origins, mechanics, and lasting impacts on advertisers in sensitive industries. For brands navigating these challenges, the key takeaway is to stay informed, monitor account performance closely, and be prepared to adapt as Meta’s data policies continue to evolve.
Brett has worked with 300+ categorized accounts, and he doesn’t hold back on what actually happens. Watch the full webinar.
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