Meta (Facebook and Instagram) Ad Targeting: Types and Settings That Deliver

This article explains the types of Facebook advertising targeting.
It also covers the settings that work best, so do read on.

1. How Facebook advertising targeting is structured

Facebook advertising is structured as follows.

Account ＞ Campaign ＞ Ad set ＞ Ad

Each ad set can have one audience.
That audience is what targets the ads.

Start by deciding who you want to reach.
Create the campaign, set the audience, then build the ad.

2. Types of Facebook advertising targeting

Facebook advertising targeting comes in three broad types.

• Core audiences
• Custom audiences
• Lookalike audiences

[Core audiences]
Core audiences let you target by location, age, gender, interests and behaviour.

Location
You can target by location data such as country, city, postcode or street address.
When you specify a particular address, you can set a radius between 1km and 80km.
You can also choose one of four refinements.
“People living in or recently in this location”
“People living in this location”
“People recently in this location”
“People travelling in this location”
These let you target far more precisely.

・Age
You can set any age from 13 to 65, year by year.
Anything above 65 is shown as “+65”

・Gender
You can choose men or women.

・Detailed targeting
Detailed targeting narrows the group of users your ads are shown to.
You can choose from interests, behaviours, demographics and connections.
Facebook’s own site states that it uses the following as criteria.
・The ads a person clicks
・The pages a person interacts with
・Activity on Facebook related to things such as device usage and travel preferences
・User data such as age, gender and location
・The mobile device used and the network connection speed
(Source: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/182371508761821?id=176276233019487&helpref=page_content）

Language
There are cases where it is better not to set this.
“Language” does not mean the country someone lives in; it is the language they use the Facebook app in.
For example, if a Japanese person living in Japan uses the Facebook app in English, setting “Language” to Japanese means the ad will never be shown to them.

[Custom audiences]
A custom audience matches your website visitors or your own customer data against Facebook’s user data.
It finds your existing customers among Facebook users.
More on this below.

[Lookalike audiences]
A lookalike audience is an audience similar to, for example, the users who have liked your Facebook page.
It works well because you can show ads to people like those who already like you, but it suits advertisers already attracting an audience on Facebook rather than someone starting from scratch.

3. The basic thinking behind Facebook advertising targeting

Custom audiences and detailed targeting make a large difference to results.
That is 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

As this shows, custom audiences matter a great deal.
Custom audiences are covered in detail below.

4. Custom audiences in detail

There are four kinds of custom audience.

• Website custom audiences
• App activity custom audiences
• Customer list custom audiences
• Engagement custom audiences

[Website custom audiences]
The Meta pixel matches Facebook users against the people who have visited your website, so you can show ads to that audience.
For example, you can reach people who viewed a service or product page but did not buy.

[App activity custom audiences]
This works well when you want to drive a particular action inside your app.
You can target the group of users most likely to take that action in the app.

[Customer list custom audiences]
You can build a custom audience from an existing customer list.
Facebook uses identifiers such as email address, phone number and street address to find the audience you want to reach.

[Engagement custom audiences]
An engagement custom audience is made up of people who have taken an action on your content within the apps and services Facebook provides.
Action, or engagement, here means things like playing a video or following your Facebook page.

5. Recommended custom audience settings

Here are three custom audience setups worth using.

[First choice]
A 1% lookalike of the customer list custom audience, plus location, age, gender and language settings
This is the one to use first.
It reaches the customers who have used your service, and also people whose attributes are close to theirs.
Because it reaches people likely to buy, it tends to perform well.

[Second choice]
A 1% lookalike of the converting users custom audience, plus location, age, gender and language settings
Converting users are people who have converted through an ad in the past, by buying or signing up for a service.
The ads go to people whose attributes are close to those converters.
Since they resemble people who have already converted, this performs well too.

[Third choice]
A 1% lookalike of the site visitors custom audience, plus location, age, gender and language settings
Site visitors means, quite literally, people who have been to your site.
This is what is usually called remarketing.
After the customer list and converting users, this targets the group closest to buying.

Those are the three setups worth using.
For details on how to set these up and how to budget for each audience, see the article below.

Audience settings for Facebook advertising that deliver, explained in full

6. In closing

That covers the types of Facebook advertising targeting and the settings that work.

To summarise:

・Setting the audience within the ad set is what makes the advertising work.

・There are three broad types of targeting, and custom audiences are the important one.

・The recommended setup is a 1% lookalike of the customer list, converting users or site visitors, plus location, age, gender and language settings.

Once targeting is set and the ads are live, see below for how to run the improvement cycle.

A manual for improving Facebook ad performance (the basics)