Facebook Ad Targeting: How to Reach the Right Audience

Facebook audience targeting is the process of defining who you want your Meta ads to reach based on criteria like demographics, interests, and behaviors. Discover which audience type is best for your campaigns and advanced tips to boost conversions.

From iOS updates to AI-driven attribution, brands using Facebook Ads continue to face challenges when it comes to audience targeting.

Luckily, there are still ways to connect with potential customers in the market for your product or service on this social network.

The key is to know how to target users while following all the right guidelines — this guide will show you how.

(Image: Unsplash)

Facebook audience types

Advertisers have three targeting options at their disposal:

1. Saved audiences (FKA core audiences)
2. Custom audiences
3. Lookalike audiences

1. Saved audiences

Saved audiences are the default audience type, defined by criteria including:

• Location
• Demographics (age, job title, etc.)
• Interests and hobbies
• User behavior (past purchases, devices used)
• Connections (people who have “liked” your event or Facebook page)

How to create a saved audience

• Navigate to “Audiences” in Facebook Ads Manager
• Click the “Create audience” dropdown menu, then select a saved audience
• Select your settings, then “Create saved audience”
• You should see your saved audience back in the “Audiences” tab of your Ads Manager

2. Custom audiences

Facebook custom audiences are people already familiar with your brand and its offerings.

Maybe they’ve downloaded your app, visited your website, or are existing customers. These can be effective retargeting (or remarketing) opportunities.

You can create custom audiences using existing data, including:

• Customer lists
• Contact lists
• Site visitors
• App users

Custom audiences are especially powerful for ecommerce brands looking to re-engage past customers and drive lead generation.

How to create a custom audience

To create a website custom audience on Facebook:

• Navigate to “Audiences” in Facebook Ads Manager
• Click the “Create audience” dropdown, then select “Custom audience”
• Select “Website traffic,” then set your rules (up to 5 rule sections)
• Name your audience and add a description (optional)
• Click “Create audience”

Once you’ve created an audience, you can select it during your next Facebook ad campaign creation process.

3. Lookalike audiences

Facebook lookalike audiences let you expand your reach to new audiences by targeting Facebook users who are similar to your existing customers.

These audiences can be invaluable for digital marketing efforts, helping you scale while maintaining strong ad performance.

Lookalike audiences are created by analyzing the characteristics of your existing customers to find new people with similar traits.

You provide Facebook with a list of active customers or email subscribers, and it will find users with similar interests and purchase behaviors.

How to create a lookalike audience

First, you need a source audience of at least 100 people from a single country (ideally between 1,000-5,000 people) to create a lookalike audience.

Then:

• In Ads Manager, click the “Create audience” dropdown, then select “Create a lookalike audience”
• Choose your source audience (note: saved audiences can’t be used as a source)
• Choose the location for your lookalike audience
  Use the slider to select the percentage of the population you want to match
• Click “Create audience”

Pro tip: Facebook audience targeting demographic options for people under 18 are limited to location and age. “The most granular we can get is Designated Market Areas (no city, ZIP, radius),” says HawkSEM Senior Lead Strategist Nicole Goodnough. “No retargeting to this age, either.”

Meta Advantage+: Facebook’s AI audience targeting option

Formerly known as Facebook Automated Ads, Meta Advantage+ is a suite of tools meant to automate campaign management, including targeting.

It uses machine learning to identify and reach people most likely to convert. It’s similar to Google’s Performance Max, automatically testing combinations of ad components for the best outcomes.

Some advertisers may prefer manual targeting for more control and detailed targeting; however, ecommerce brands should use Advantage+ for the majority of their campaigns.

Which ad targeting options to use

Wondering which audience option is best for your campaign? Here are some key factors to help you decide:

What are your campaign goals?

If your campaign goal is to generate brand awareness or reach a larger audience, saved audiences are your best option as they rely on demographic and interest targeting.

Leveraging lookalike audiences can help you connect with a wider audience similar to your existing customers.

If your goal is to increase conversion rates and sales, use custom audience targeting based on existing customer data along with lookalike audiences to broaden that reach.

Do you have existing data?

Brands with existing first-party data like email lists, pixel data, and customer information should use custom audiences to their advantage.

If you are a newer business, a small business owner, or have limited data, start with saved audiences before branching out to custom audiences.

What are your budget and testing capabilities?

Advertisers with a smaller budget should begin with saved audiences before testing custom and lookalike audiences with campaign growth.

For larger budgets, there is the flexibility to test several audiences to discover which works best.

TL;DR

Saved audiences are best for reaching new, broad audiences (brand awareness) based on demographics, interests, and behaviors. It’s a good starting point, especially if you have limited data and budget.

Custom audiences are best for retargeting your existing contacts, like website visitors or email subscribers, for more conversions — but this requires existing data for maximum ROI.

Lookalike audiences are best for finding new people similar to your best customers or leads to expand reach.

The ideal strategy often blends targeting options, starting with more broad settings and becoming more granular with custom and lookalike audiences as you accumulate data.

Advanced targeting strategies

Once you feel comfortable with Facebook Ads targeting, you can get more granular with your strategies for more effective campaigns. Here are some advanced options to consider:

Layering audience targeting

Facebook gives advertisers the ability to layer targeting options to create a more specific audience over time.

This goes beyond targeting a combination of demographics, location, and behaviors (for example, young women between 18-25 living in Arizona who make regular product purchases).

Instead, you can match specific products and ad copy to more defined audience types.

An example of this might be a massage gun company targeting people who recently signed up for a marathon with specific ad messaging on the importance of incorporating recovery into a training plan.

Exclude audiences

Similar to negative keywords, exclusions are Facebook Ads’ way of allowing you to remove unqualified people from viewing your ads.

This is helpful for preventing ads from targeting people who have already converted or overlapping audiences.

For example, if you retarget someone, excluding them from more general brand awareness ads will prevent ad fatigue.

Sequential retargeting

Sequential retargeting is a strategy where you show a series of ads to the same audience in a specific order.

Using custom audiences, you can target people who interact with each ad and trigger the next ad in the series.

Using Ads Manager, set up rules to create the flow of ads and move prospects further down the sales funnel — just be sure to exclude people who have already converted.

How to test and optimize your ad targeting

Ready to make the most of your Facebook targeting? It’s critical to test and optimize your audiences. Here’s how to do it:

Analyze performance metrics

Review your key performance indicators (KPIs) to help you identify the audiences that yield the best results. This includes:

• Click-through rate (CTR)
• Cost per click (CPC)
• Cost per conversion (CPA)

Return on ad spend (ROAS)

A/B test

A/B testing compares different audience segments to see which performs best, such as different demographic groups or people with different interests or behaviors.

When A/B testing your audiences, make sure your budget, ad creative, and placements are all the same for the most accurate results — and let the test run for around one to two weeks to gather enough data.

Optimize

Once you identify your top-performing audiences:

• Refine your targeting: Use Facebook’s breakdown tools to see which sub-groups (like age or location) are driving results.
• Expand with lookalike audiences: Create lookalike audiences based on your best converters to reach similar people.
• Exclude low-performing segments: Stop targeting audiences that aren’t delivering to free up your budget.

Facebook advertising mistakes to avoid

While there are many areas of opportunity for advertisers on Facebook, there are also plenty of ways to drain your budget without much to show for it, especially in terms of targeting.

Prevent underperforming campaigns by avoiding these missteps:

• Restricting your audience unnecessarily
• Targeting an outdated ideal buyer persona
• Not knowing which type of content or ads your audience prefers
• Not A/B testing your campaign elements
• An inconsistent campaign creation process
• Not choosing the right campaign objective
• Selecting the wrong budget spending option
• Not double-checking your tracking data

Pro tip: If it makes sense for your goals and offerings, consider Facebook audience targeting via life events. The platform allows you to target events such as travel, relationships (like getting married), moving, a new job, and more. This way, if you’re a wedding dress shop targeting brides-to-be, your campaigns are more likely to be relevant.

Data and privacy issues: How to adapt in 2025

Tracking user data has become increasingly challenging after Apple rolled out a policy in April 2021 as part of its iOS 14 update requiring users to opt in to having their data tracked in certain apps (like Facebook).

Audience targeting on Facebook isn’t getting any easier, either. The iOS 18 update delivered even stricter privacy controls and more transparent tracking disclosures.

However, advertisers can still collect valuable data for more effective audience targeting with the Meta Pixel and Facebook’s Conversions API.

Meta Pixel

The Meta Pixel (FKA Facebook Pixel) is a snippet of code added to your website that tracks a user’s behavior after clicking your ad. It allows advertisers to:

• Make sure your ads are shown to the right people
• Drive more sales
• Measure the results of your ads

It can offer audience insights like the actions people take once they get to your site from Facebook, where they drop off, and what they add to their cart.

This helps you better understand your target audience and is helpful when it comes to conversion tracking as well as retargeting.

You can leverage the Pixel to ensure your ads are visible to the right audience members, increase sales, and gather important metrics around campaign performance.

Other key features of the Meta Pixel include:

• Ad delivery optimization
• Website traffic insights
• The ability to turn website visitors into custom audiences
• Better understanding of cross-channel conversions

Conversions API

With CAPI, Facebook assigns a unique ID to each user who goes from clicking a Facebook ad to arriving at the landing page on your site. It then logs actions taken and reports them back to Facebook.

CAPI is similar to the Pixel, except that data is transferred from server to server, eliminating the need for third-party cookies.

As an added bonus, some consider CAPI more reliable than the Pixel since it doesn’t hinge on browser performance or cookies. (It’s also not hindered by ad blockers like the Pixel.)

Further reading: How to Run Facebook Ads: A Beginner’s Guide to Success

Facebook Ads best practices

No matter which audience sizes and segments you’re speaking to, it’s a social media best practice to center the viewer as the hero of the ad.

Rather than telling your viewer why your brand is great, campaigns that see the best ad performance demonstrate why the product or service can be the solution to their pain points.

If your audience is remodeling their bathroom and needs a new bathtub, empathize with them about the exhausting nature of home remodeling.

Then, you can show how easy your bathtubs are to install. Meet them where they are, and they’ll be more likely to consider your brand.

Facebook has published its own list of tips to make your ad more engaging. They include:

• Use vertical videos and visuals
• Put less text overlay on images
• Leverage the carousel format to include multiple images
• Add movement (hyperlapse, boomerang, Adobe editing features, etc.)
• Use strong calls to action (CTAs)

The takeaway

Social media platforms are constantly evolving. It can be challenging to keep up with all the new policies and regulations.

On the bright side, there’s plenty of opportunity when advertisers can connect with potential clients seamlessly and directly.

Leverage Facebook audience with hyper-segmented lookalike audiences and custom creative. When you do, you get a two-pronged approach with people who are extremely qualified and likely to convert.

And once these lookalike campaigns are live, Facebook monitors who clicks and who doesn’t, and uses this information to continually refine its targeting. This can lead to audiences that grow even stronger with time and, ideally, become new customers.

Need help navigating your Facebook marketing? Call in the Hawks.

This post has been updated and was originally published in November 2022.