Today’s targeting combines advertiser input and Meta’s algorithmic distribution to get you as many actions as possible within your budget. But there’s a common misunderstanding among advertisers about how much control they actually have.
What I often hear from advertisers who want control is that they switched from Advantage+ Audience to Raw Audience because they didn’t trust Meta’s algorithmic distribution. But often, they’re also dealing with algorithmic distribution issues.
As someone who specializes in educating advertisers on how the system works, this was an incredibly frustrating discussion. While this makes sense to me, it doesn’t make sense to most people.
That’s why I wrote this article. More importantly, why I created the following grid.
Grid comparison
Are your targeting inputs respected? Or do they think it’s just advice? Will your audience grow?
The grid above summarizes the importance of your targeting input, depending on the setting. When you use Advantage+ Audience, your input is treated the same in all situations, regardless of performance goals. However, there are a few factors that can affect the importance of your input when working with raw audiences.
The important thing here is that we don’t know how important your audience suggestions are, although my testing shows they have a small impact. We also don’t know how much your audience will expand when the original audience expands, although my testing again shows that this is similar to when using Advantage+ Audience.
The problem here is that Meta offers almost no transparency on the matter. Of course, this is completely solvable. I’ve long requested segmentation to produce separate rows of results for our target inputs and inputs exceeding our target. Until then, we can only guess.
Still, we can work around this as if audience suggestions are just as powerful to Advantage+ Audience as your targeting inputs, which can be expanded upon when using the original audience. When we do this, we can make it clearer what we can and cannot control.
Advantage+ Audience (any performance goal)
Advantage+ Audience is largely algorithm-driven. This means that regardless of performance goals, Meta will search for the people most likely to do what you want. This freedom can help reduce costs and improve outcomes (not without risks).
Dear input:
Anything entered into audience controls within the ad set is strictly constrained and will be respected. Meta will not display ads to people outside these controls.
When you customize here, the following will be respected…
Place
I often hear complaints that positions aren’t actually respected, but this is a misunderstanding of how positions are controlled in the first place.
You’ll be exposed to people who “live or recently lived” in the location of your choice. If it is a city, it also includes a radius of more than 10 miles beyond it. You can’t quarantine people who only live in a certain area.
Yes, location targeting is confusing. But using Advantage+ Audience or original audiences doesn’t make things any more confusing. The same rules apply.
Minimum age (18-25 years old)
You can set a minimum age, but it cannot be lower than 18 or higher than 25. The minimum age that can be set depends on the target country.
Please note that the upper age limit is not an audience control option.
Excluded custom audiences
You can also exclude people in specific custom audiences. An example would be to exclude people who purchased a specific product you are promoting.
As is the case with location, this approach isn’t perfect. Custom audiences are almost never complete for a variety of reasons, and you’re most likely to notice this through exclusions. If you’re reaching existing customers but excluding them with a custom audience, it’s not because you’re using Advantage+ Audience or original audiences. In both cases, these exclusions are handled the same way.
language
This control is unlikely to be used frequently.
As noted in the tooltip, Meta recommends specifying a language only if it’s uncommon in your chosen location.
Audience suggestions:
You can provide audience suggestions through Advantage+ Audience, but this is purely optional.
Meta says they will “prioritize audiences that match this profile before conducting a broader search.” So that means anything you provide here isn’t strictly binding.
These include the following settings:
- custom audience
- age range
- gender
- Detailed goals (interests and behaviors)
Please note that there is a minimum age to be respected for the audience control, but there is also an age range and this is just a suggestion. In other words, the ranges here (minimum and maximum) are considered suggestions only, and your ad can be shown to users outside of that range if Meta thinks it will lead to more actions you want.
A minimum age for audience control will be observed. But it doesn’t necessarily need to be the same setting as in Audience Suggestions. If you do set a minimum age in your audience controls, you won’t be able to set a recommendation range below that age.
For example, if you set the minimum age for audience controls to 25, you cannot set the recommended minimum age range below 25.
A key takeaway here is There are no viewer controls for maximum age or gender.
Original Audience (Conversion Performance Goal)
Algorithm scaling will be important if you switch to original audiences while using performance goals to optimize conversions or value. The distribution at this point is probably most similar to the distribution obtained when using Advantage+ Audience.
Note that this has nothing to do with your campaign goals. For example, you could use the “Sales” goal, but select the “Maximize Impressions” performance goal. The factor that influences these differences is performance goals.
Dear input:
- minimum age
- maximum age
- gender
- Place
- Custom audience exclusions
- language
Audience expansion:
- similar audience
- Detailed positioning
This is what I find most surprising to advertisers. When optimizing for conversions or value and you provide lookalike audiences for targeting, Advantage Lookalike is automatically turned on and cannot be turned off.
The same is true for detailed targeting. If you provide detailed targeting, Advantage detailed targeting is automatically turned on and cannot be turned off.
Theoretically, your audience will only grow if you deliver more or better results. But all the indications I’m getting are that your audience expands significantly in these cases.
it depends:
You can provide the original audience for a custom audience, but whether or not the audience grows will depend on whether you select the “Advantage Custom Audiences” checkbox. It is selected by default.
If unchecked, you can run remarketing ads that target only people in the custom audience you selected. If you check that box, you’ll reach people well beyond that group. From my testing, this scaling is similar to what happens when you use Advantage+ Audience to provide custom audiences as suggestions.
Original audience (link clicks/landing page views)
Of course, what is and isn’t expanded by default and whether it can be turned off depends on your performance goals. Things are slightly different if the performance goal you choose is to maximize link clicks or landing page views.
Dear input:
- minimum age
- maximum age
- gender
- Place
- Custom audience exclusions
- language
Audience expansion:
Here, only Advantage detailed targeting is enabled by default and there is no option to turn it off.
This is a change rolling out in early 2024.
it depends:
When using the original audience, you always have the option to turn off Advantage Custom Audience (assuming you remember to uncheck the box). When optimizing for link clicks or landing page views, you can also choose to turn off Advantage Lookalike to focus on a lookalike audience of your choice.
Original Audience (any other performance goals)
As with any other performance goal (reach, impressions, post engagement, ThruPlays, etc.), you have more control over whether to grow your audience when using your original audience.
Dear input:
- minimum age
- maximum age
- gender
- Place
- Custom audience exclusions
- language
Audience expansion:
By default nothing will be expanded.
it depends:
In this case, you can turn on Advantage Detailed Targeting if you wish.
Advantage Custom Audience and Advantage Lookalike are both optional.
What should you do?
So by now you should understand that whether you decide to use Advantage+ Audience or Raw Audience, algorithmic distribution beyond your targeting inputs can occur. Sometimes a raw audience does give you more control. But this extra control isn’t always needed, or even beneficial.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to this. But here’s how I approach it…
1. When using conversion performance goals and purchase conversion events
Remember, you can select conversion events other than purchases. However, when using purchases as the goal conversion event, I recommend using Advantage+ Audience (if not Advantage+ Shopping). The algorithm will adjust in real time to show your ad to the people most likely to buy. This flexibility can only help you.
Even if your customers are primarily female and you can’t set gender as an audience control, the algorithm should adjust when a purchase is your target event. Meta doesn’t want to waste money on people who won’t cause that action (which might be a problem with other types of optimization).
2. When using conversion performance goals and other conversion events
If you choose a conversion event other than “Purchase”, I still recommend using Advantage+ Audience. However, you should monitor it closely to ensure that the algorithm does not exploit weaknesses that could lead to low-quality results.
Again, the point of the algorithm is to get you as many target actions as possible within your budget. This isn’t a problem when the target event is a purchase. This way, you won’t be in danger of purchasing low-quality items. But that could be a matter of clues or other actions.
But I emphasize the word “can.” Don’t assume it. I’ve actually seen it go both ways. I use Advantage+ Audience to generate high-quality leads at a low cost. I’ve also seen the algorithm suddenly skew towards the highest age groups, resulting in low quality leads. The problem, of course, is that we can’t set a maximum age audience control.
3. When using any other performance objective
This is a bit of a loaded assumption as I generally don’t recommend using other performance targets as there is always the possibility of producing low quality results. The reason is that the algorithm will always exploit weaknesses in the placement or user pool to give you as many actions as you want. This can be a big problem when optimizing for clicks or engagement.
In fact, switching from Advantage+ Audience does not solve this problem. But you can at least limit your audience by maximum age or gender, if that’s important. This can be a problem if your business primarily serves women or a specific age group.
Why is this a problem? If you want post engagements or video views, Meta’s delivery algorithm only cares about getting you more post engagements or video views. It doesn’t care whether potential customers see your ad. If men click on your ad or watch your video, Meta will take this as a signal that more men should see your ad.
now you
How do you handle audience investment and expansion?
Let me know in the comments below!
