Audiences and Targeting
Targeting decides who is eligible to see an ad. Meta offers several audience types, and in recent years it has shifted toward automated audience selection guided by advertiser inputs. This guide explains each option and how they are used together.
On This Page
Core Audiences
Core audiences are built from Meta's own data: location, age, gender, languages and detailed targeting based on interests, behaviors and demographics. Meta has removed many detailed targeting options over time, including sensitive categories in 2022, so lists in older guides may no longer exist.
Custom Audiences
Custom audiences are built from your own sources. Website custom audiences use Pixel and Conversions API data, customer list audiences use uploaded contact data matched to Meta accounts, and engagement audiences use interactions with your Page, Instagram account, videos, lead forms or shopping experiences. They are most often used for retargeting and for exclusions.
Lookalike Audiences
A lookalike audience contains people similar to a source audience, such as your customer list or past purchasers. Advertisers choose a source and a size, expressed as a percentage of a country's population. Meta now folds lookalike logic into Advantage+ audience by default, but manual lookalikes remain available.
Advantage+ Audience
Advantage+ audience is Meta's automated option. Advertisers provide audience suggestions, such as a custom audience or interests, and Meta uses them as a starting point while expanding to other people it predicts will respond. For many accounts this has become the default recommendation, with manual constraints used only where there is a clear reason.
Exclusions and Overlap
Excluding existing customers from prospecting campaigns, and excluding recent converters from retargeting, keeps spend focused. Audience overlap between ad sets can make them compete in the auction, which Meta's audience overlap tool can diagnose.
Special Ad Categories
Ads about credit, employment, housing and social, electoral or political issues must be declared as a special ad category. This limits targeting options and, for some categories, changes how audiences are built.
Putting This to Work
Most businesses now get better results by giving Meta good creative and clean conversion data than by hand-picking interests. Your customer list and website visitors are the most valuable targeting inputs you own.
In Practice
A wellness retreat uploads its list of past guests as a customer list, excludes them from prospecting and uses them as the seed for new audiences. Cost per discovery call drops because the ads reach people who resemble previous guests.
Declaring a special ad category when required is mandatory, and failing to do so can lead to rejected ads or account restrictions.
Key Terms
- Custom audience
- An audience built from your own data sources.
- Lookalike audience
- People similar to a source audience you choose.
- Advantage+ audience
- Meta's automated audience option guided by advertiser suggestions.
- Audience overlap
- The share of people who appear in two audiences.
Key Facts
- Customer list audiences depend on match rates, so complete and well-formatted data produces larger audiences.
- Audience sizes shown in Ads Manager are estimates.
Sources
- Meta Business Help Center www.facebook.com
- Ads Guide, Meta for Business www.facebook.com
- Meta Advertising Standards transparency.meta.com
- Meta Blueprint courses www.facebook.com
- Search Engine Journal, paid social www.searchenginejournal.com
- Pew Research Center, social media use www.pewresearch.org
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