In brief
Targeting decides who can see your ad: where these people live, their age, their interests, their behavior. It is set in the ad set.
Why it matters
Targeting that is too narrow makes the audience expensive and saturates it quickly. Targeting that is too broad dilutes the budget. The goal is to find the right balance.
The main settings
- Locations: countries, regions, cities, or a radius around an address. You can also exclude locations.
- Age and gender.
- Detailed targeting: interests, behaviors, demographics.
- Custom and lookalike audiences (to include or exclude).
- Languages, if needed.
The steps
- Open the ad set and go to the Audience section.
- Choose the locations (with a radius around an address for a local business).
- Set the age and gender only if your offer genuinely warrants it.
- Add interests close to your offer, or let Meta expand the audience automatically if you want it to optimize it.
- Exclude unhelpful audiences (existing customers for an acquisition campaign).
- Look at the audience size indicator: avoid an audience that is too narrow.
- Save the audience to reuse it.
Pitfalls to avoid
- Stacking too many criteria: the audience becomes tiny.
- Overlap: several ad sets aimed at the same people compete with each other and drive costs up.
- Targeting an age or gender out of habit, for no reason.
- Forgetting exclusions.
Key takeaways
- Audience width = a balance between precision and volume.
- Exclude as much as you include.
- Don’t overlap audiences.
Practice in TRIALO
Create two ad sets: one with a very narrow location and age, the other broader. Compare the estimated size and, after publishing, the simulated CPM.