Facebook Ad Audiences That Deliver, Explained in Full

Audience settings are one of the most important parts of getting results from Facebook advertising. They are also complicated to set up, which makes it hard to tell which settings are best.

This article sets out the audience settings we recommend for getting results.

The article below gives a full account of how to improve Facebook advertising management, audience settings included. Do read it alongside this one.

A manual for improving Facebook ad performance (the basics)

1. What Facebook audience settings are built on

As the image above shows, the audience you can define in a Facebook ‘ad set’ comes down to
① custom audiences
② location
③ age
④ gender
⑤ detailed targeting
⑥ language
these six settings.

② location, ③ age, ④ gender and ⑥ language are clear-cut and rarely make much difference to results.
① custom audiences and ⑤ detailed targeting, on the other hand, change results considerably.

Related article:
Facebook ad targeting types and the settings that deliver results

2. The thinking behind Facebook audience settings

① custom audiences and ⑤ detailed targeting make such a difference because those two settings are what define the ‘sweet spot’ in the image above.

The “sweet spot” means that, on top of location, age, gender and language, you have also narrowed down
・behaviour on your website
・how the person has set up their Facebook profile
those two points as well.

For example, say you run ads for a renovation company in Toyama and want to advertise a renovation plan for detached houses.

Rather than running them to this audience,
・Living in Toyama
・Aged 25 to 64
・Men / women

you can expect better results from running them to this audience.
・Has viewed your renovation plan page at least once
・Has set themselves as married or as having a family on Facebook
・Living in Toyama
・Aged 25 to 64
・Men / women

Below we explain the settings that narrow those two down.

3. Facebook audience settings that get results

With that groundwork in place, the five audience settings in the table below are the ones we recommend for results.

Priorities	The audience settings
１	A 1% lookalike of the ‘customer list’ custom audience plus location / age / gender / language settings
２	A 1% lookalike of the ‘users who converted’ custom audience plus location / age / gender / language settings
３	A 1% lookalike of the ‘visitors to your own site’ custom audience plus location / age / gender / language settings
４	Detailed targeting plus location / age / gender / language settings
５	A broad audience (location / age / gender / language only)

In order of priority,
(1) a 1% lookalike of the ‘customer list’ custom audience, with location, age, gender and language set
(2) a 1% lookalike of the ‘users who converted’ custom audience, with location, age, gender and language set
(3) a 1% lookalike of the ‘visitors to your own site’ custom audience, with location, age, gender and language set
(4) detailed targeting plus location / age / gender / language settings
(5) a broad audience (location / age / gender / language only)
.

What works best will of course vary with whether you sell to consumers or to businesses, how large the target group is, how many people visit your site and what budget you have, but treat these as the basic framework.

Running all five of these audience settings means five ad sets. Setting up all five and comparing them is ideal, but take care if your budget is small. Facebook recommends a daily budget of at least 3,000 yen per ad set, so we suggest working down from the highest-priority audience in line with your budget.

Below we look at each audience setting in detail.

3.1 [Priority 1] Customer list

The audience setting we recommend above all others is
A 1% lookalike of the customer list custom audience, plus location, age, gender and language settings

A ‘customer list’ is a list of details for the customers who use your service now or have used it in the past.

That means names, phone numbers and email addresses. Load this information into Facebook as Excel data and you can run ads to exactly those customers.

And on Facebook, working from that customer list, users whose profile resembles your customers’can be reached as well (a 1% lookalike).

The profile of past and present customers is unquestionably close to that of someone about to buy your service, so advertising to users who resemble them is a highly effective approach.

As the diagram above shows, of all the settings available in Facebook advertising, a 1% lookalike of the customer list is the audience closest to buying.

As a rule, start with the audiences shown in the darkest shade in the diagram, the ones most tightly narrowed in terms of buying your service.

How to build a 1% lookalike of the ‘customer list’

Setting location, age, gender and language is straightforward enough in the ads interface, so here we cover the 1% lookalike of the ‘customer list’and how to build it.

Under ‘Audience’ in the ‘ad set’, click ‘Create new’.

Click Custom audience.

Click Customer list, then click ‘Next’.

This brings up the guidance screen for creating a customer list.

Click ‘Download file template’, circled in red, to download an Excel template for loading customer details into Facebook. Follow the template and fill in your own customer details.
※ Before customer details are sent to Facebook, a security technique called hashing is applied, irreversibly converting the information into a random string of characters.

From there, follow the guidance to finish creating the customer list.

Next, from the same ‘Create new’ button, click ‘Lookalike audience’.

Then click inside the search field marked ‘Choose an existing audience or data source’ and select the customer list audience you have just created.

Next, under ‘Select audience size’, check that the lookalike figure reads 1%, then press the blue ‘Create audience’ button.
※ The 1% here means running ads to the top 1% of Facebook users whose profile is closest to your customer list. That 1% is roughly 460,000 people (as of November 2021).

The 1% lookalike of the customer list is now complete.
After that, select the lookalike audience you have just created in the ‘Search existing audiences’ field shown in the diagram below, and it will be applied to the ad set.

3.2 [Priority 2] Users who converted

The second audience setting we recommend is
A 1% lookalike of the converting users custom audience, plus location, age, gender and language settings

‘Users who converted’ means users who have already converted via the landing page used for your ads.

Put simply, users who converted at some point from the ads you are running now. You then run ads to users whose profile resembles theirs (a 1% lookalike).

Anyone who has already converted from the ads you are running now is plainly the user you want, so running ads to users close to them can be expected to work well.

How to build a 1% lookalike of ‘users who converted’

Under ‘Audience’ in the ‘ad set’, click ‘Create new’.

Click Custom audience.

Select ‘Website’ and click ‘Next’.

Under ‘Source’, set the pixel you are currently using, the one placed on your landing page.

Next, under ‘Events’, select ‘People who visited specific web pages’.

Then, under ‘Any of the following values’, enter the URL of your thank-you page.

A thank-you page is the screen a user lands on after buying or signing up from the landing page used for your ads. Reaching that screen tells you the user bought or signed up.
In this setup, that is how ‘people who reached the thank-you page’ is defined.

Next, give the audience a clear name of your choosing, such as ‘CV users’, and click the ‘Create audience’ button.

The ‘users who converted’ custom audience is now complete.
After that, build the 1% lookalike described in 3-1 from the ‘users who converted’ custom audience.

3.3 [Priority 3] Visitors to your own site

The third audience setting we recommend is
A 1% lookalike of the site visitors custom audience, plus location, age, gender and language settings

‘Visitors to your own site’ means, literally, users who have been to your site at least once, users who have shown some degree of interest in your service online.

This is what is usually called remarketing, and after the first and second settings it is the one aimed closest to buying.

One point to watch: remarketing will not work well unless the Facebook pixel is placed across your whole site. When you first set things up, add the Facebook pixel to every domain you own, landing pages included.

How to build a 1% lookalike of ‘visitors to your own site’

The steps resemble those for the ‘users who converted’ custom audience in 3.2.

First, under ‘Audience’ in the ‘ad set’, click ‘Create new’.

Click Custom audience.

Select ‘Website’ and click ‘Next’.

Under ‘Source’, set the pixel you are currently using, the one placed on your landing page.

Next, under ‘Events’, select ‘All website visitors’.

Next, give the audience a clear name of your choosing, such as ‘Site visitors’, and click the ‘Create audience’ button.

The ‘visitors to your own site’ custom audience is now complete.
After that, build the 1% lookalike described in 3-1 from the ‘visitors to your own site’ custom audience.

3.4 [Priority 4] Detailed targeting

The fourth audience setting we recommend is
detailed targeting plus location / age / gender / language settings an audience built that way.

From here on, the approach does not involve creating a custom audience.

How to build a detailed targeting plus location / age / gender / language audience

First, set ‘location’, ‘age’, ‘gender’ and ‘language’ to match the target you want for this campaign.

Next, in the ‘detailed targeting’ field, search for keywords likely to match your target’s interests and behaviour, then pick suitable ones from the suggestions that come up.
Clicking ‘Suggestions’ brings up candidates, which makes choosing easier.

We do not recommend setting ‘detailed targeting’ finely when ‘location’, ‘age’, ‘gender’ and ‘language’ have already narrowed users down too far.

The right-hand side of the audience screen shows a rough indicator of audience breadth, and we recommend keeping your settings within a range where that indicator does not read ‘narrow’.

3.5 [Priority 5] Broad audience

The fifth audience setting we recommend is a broad audience

A broad audience is one where only location, age, gender and language are set. In other words, the widest audience, narrowed as little as possible.

The strength of a broad audience is that every target user Facebook can reach is included, so

• volume is high and the audience is slow to run dry
• you can reach cheaper-to-bid-on users your competitors are not going after, which may bring the CPA down over the long run

.

In the early stages, with no narrowing of the target, results are often worse than with the four audiences described above.

Run for long enough, though, and it can beat the other four. Facebook’s machine learning is highly accurate, so performance improves as long as you feed it enough data, even with a wide audience. Seen that way, letting machine learning narrow delivery down from the widest possible audience holds the potential to become the best-performing audience over the long run.

4. In closing

We hope that was useful. Here is a recap.

■ In Facebook advertising, delivery is defined by six things: ① custom audiences ② location ③ age ④ gender ⑤ detailed targeting ⑥ language

■ Of those, ① and ⑤ matter most, as they define behaviour on your website and profile settings on Facebook

■ The audiences we recommend are
　1st
　A 1% lookalike of the customer list custom audience, plus location, age, gender and language settings
　2nd
　A 1% lookalike of the converting users custom audience, plus location, age, gender and language settings
　3rd
　A 1% lookalike of the site visitors custom audience, plus location, age, gender and language settings
　4th
　detailed targeting plus location / age / gender / language settings
　5th
　A broad audience (location / age / gender / language only)

■ Work down from the highest-ranked setting, putting a daily budget of at least 3,000 yen into each audience

■ Ideally, set up all five, measure them and compare.

We also give away a free manual listing the Facebook advertising settings we recommend, audience settings included, so do get in touch below if you would like a copy.

Thank you for reading to the end.