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Most health advertisers can’t run compliant retargeting because retargeting builds audiences from page visits, and a visit to an eating disorder page reveals health information. Google bars advertiser-curated audiences when promoting mental health services, and Meta restricts custom conversions that suggest health conditions. Beacon measures campaigns on conversion counts with no contact or health details and reaches broad or contextual audiences instead.
What makes standard retargeting a problem for behavioral health practices?
Standard retargeting is a problem because the audience carries health information. A pixel on a depression treatment page adds each visitor to a list defined by that page, and the ad platform learns who looked at it. The practice is telling the platform who showed interest in which condition.
The FTC has acted on similar data flows. It charged that BetterHelp revealed email addresses, IP addresses, and health questionnaire answers to advertising platforms, and BetterHelp agreed to pay $7.8 million in 2023. The FTC’s BetterHelp refund page reports a further round in April 2025: “payments totaling over $2.6 million to more than 534,000 people.”
In February 2023, the FTC also said GoodRx uploaded contact details of users who had bought particular medications to Facebook and targeted them with health-related ads. Samuel Levine, then Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in the GoodRx announcement: “Digital health companies and mobile apps should not cash in on consumers’ extremely sensitive and personally identifiable health information.”
What do Google and Meta allow health advertisers to do?
Google and Meta both limit health-based targeting and tracking in their own policies. Google’s health in personalized advertising policy treats mental health conditions as a sensitive interest category and states that advertiser-curated audiences “can’t be used if promoting in sensitive interest categories, because they may inadvertently contain sensitive user signals.” That includes Google’s “Your data segments” and Customer Match.
Meta tightened its own rules in 2025. Meta’s pixel conversion tracking documentation states: “Beginning September 2, 2025, we will start to roll out more proactive restrictions on custom conversions that may suggest information not permitted under our terms.” Its examples include conversions suggesting “specific health conditions.” A conversion named for a condition page, such as anxiety or an eating disorder, is the kind of signal these rules describe.
What can a behavioral health practice run instead?
A behavioral health practice can run campaigns that reach broad or contextual audiences and are measured on conversion counts with no contact or health details, with no audience lists built from condition or service pages. Relevance comes from search keywords, content placements, and ad copy that speaks to the services a practice offers, in place of data about who visited which page.
Beacon’s standard is that no names, contact details, or health information are sent to an ad platform, and that tracking stays off booking, intake, and portal pages. Beacon uses server-side conversion tracking under a signed business associate agreement with the tracking provider to strip those details before a conversion reaches an ad platform. What arrives is a generic event, such as an appointment request, with a hashed IP address and no condition, service, page address, or form content. Beacon measures and optimizes campaigns on counts of those events.
What does this answer not cover?
This answer does not cover whether any particular campaign, tracking setup, or vendor meets HIPAA, FTC, or state law requirements. Compliance is the covered entity’s obligation, and no tracking tool makes a practice compliant. The page makes no claim that condition-based retargeting can be done compliantly, and it offers no performance guarantee for any approach.
Platform policies change often. The Google and Meta language quoted here reflects their pages as of September 2026, and each platform’s current help pages control. The page does not address substance use disorder records under 42 CFR Part 2, state health data laws such as Washington’s My Health My Data Act, or email marketing to existing patients.
This page is general information about how website tracking works and what regulators and platforms have published. It is not legal advice. Laws and platform policies change, and a practice with questions about its own obligations should talk to its own attorney or privacy officer.
Frequently asked questions
Can a practice retarget people who visited a specific condition page?
Not on Google when promoting mental health services: its policy bars advertiser-curated audiences there, including “Your data segments” and Customer Match. Meta flags custom conversions that suggest health conditions. Beacon does not recommend or build condition-based retargeting lists, and this page does not describe a compliant way to build one.
Does server-side tracking make retargeting compliant?
No tool makes a practice compliant, and server-side tracking is not a retargeting workaround. Beacon uses it only to strip contact and health details before a conversion reaches an ad platform, and hashed contact details are not sent either. FTC technology staff wrote that hashes “can still be used to identify users,” pointing to BetterHelp’s hashed email addresses.
Will campaigns perform worse without condition-based audiences?
Results vary by market, budget, and offer, and no one can promise a number. Beacon measures and optimizes campaigns on stripped-down conversion counts, and it tests changes on its own campaigns before applying them to client accounts. Condition-based lists stay off the table either way.
What sits behind a practice’s contact form, and how Beacon handles it, is covered in What’s Actually Behind Your Practice’s Contact Form?
