Meta Ads Targeting Options

Understanding the right target audiences before launching or advertising your PPC ads on the Meta Ads platform is very important to all industries. 

The Meta Ads platform provides a powerful platform for businesses to promote their B2C products or B2B services on paid social as advertising tools and is a very important part of business to create awareness, and engagement and build up your potential customer base. 

Meta Ads allows you to promote and serve ads on stories, reels, feeds and other placements across Facebook and Instagram. 

It is very important to understand your audiences and who you are targeting via online platforms. Therefore, it is vital to select the right meta ads targeting options and be able to optimise the campaign further. 

meta audience targeting Options

In Meta, there are several options and ways to define your target audiences by thinking about the characteristics that your current customers have in common, such as demographics, location and interests.

DEMOGRAPHIC META AUDIENCE TARGETING

The demographics option enables you to target specific characteristics of audiences that could potentially become new customers or retarget the current audiences.

Meta Ads allow you to utilise an array of demographics to make your advertising campaign precise and relevant. 

The Demographic options are age, gender, and location. 

• Age:  You can set a specific age range to tailor their messages and serve ads to different demographics, as some products or services are suited for certain age ranges. 
• Gender: You can set a specific gender to promote certain products and services. Similarly, it will allow you to optimise the campaign by creating 2 different ad sets for females and males (separate for each gender) allowing advertisers to analyse and understand customer’s behaviours and control the budget more efficiently. 

• Location: Meta Ads allow advertisers to set a specific location to promote/serve ads and reach new audiences.  You can target and exclude locations by country, state, region, city, zip code, and more. 

In 2023, Meta Ads announced that there are no more options of ‘People living in this location’, ‘People recently in this location’ and ‘People traveling in this location’ to select as they have been removed by Meta.

From now on the only meta ads targeting option we can select is ‘People living in or recently in this location’, 

There are important guidelines for Meta Ads location targeting:

• Maximum radius: 50 miles (approximately 80 kilometers) 
• Minimum radius: 1 mile (approximately 1.6 kilometers)

INTEREST & BEHAVIOUR META AUDIENCE TARGETING

Meta Ads’ detail targeting meta ads targeting option allows you to target audiences based on user’s interests and behaviours. 

Interests

You should be able to define your target audiences based on their hobbies, interests, activities and preferences. Then, Meta will be determined based on users' activity on Facebook or Instagram such as engagement with pages and ads. 

Behaviours

Similar to the behavioural targeting option, you can target users based on specific behaviours such as purchase behaviour (Engaged Shoppers), Device Usage (based on the devices they use), and Travel Behavior (users who frequently travel or have recently been to specific locations).

Life Events

Meta Ads allow you to target users based on their life events such as anniversaries, away from family, away from hometown, birthdays, friends of a particular demographic group, long-distance relationships, new job, new relationship, newly engaged (3 months, 6 months, 1 year), newlywed (3 months, 6 months, 1 year), and recently moved.

Relationship Status

Meta Ads allow you to target users based on their relationship status such as complicated, divorced, engaged, in a relationship, married, single and more. 

Education and Workplace

In terms of the Education option, this allows you to target users' education level, fields of study, schools, and undergrad years.

Additionally, the workplace option on Meta Ads allows you to target users in their careers that are related to their employers, industries, and job titles.

Financial Targeting

Meta Ads allow you to target users based on their household income. This meta ads targeting option is suited to businesses that are selling high-end services or luxury products. 

Parents

CUSTOM AUDIENCE TARGETING OPTIONS

A custom audience is an meta ads targeting option that allows you to reach your existing audiences among online users across Meta Ads platforms. 

This meta ads targeting option allows you to use your sources such as websites, customer lists, app activity, offline activity and catalogue.

 

Similarly, you will be able to use the Meta sources such as video, Instagram account, Lead forms, Events, Instant Experiences, Facebook pages, Shopping and lastly On-Facebook listing. 

A custom audience option is very powerful for reaching your target audiences across all stages of the marketing funnel. The reason is that you will be able to create a custom audience based on users’ engagement and interaction on Facebook or Instagram and additionally retarget users who have visited your website or specific pages, added to cart, initiated checkout and also users who have purchased. 

Lookalike Audiences

A Lookalike Audience is also an additional option on Meta Ads that allows you to reach users that are similar to your specified audiences (one of your custom audiences). This meta ads targeting option allows you to create from your custom audiences and enables you to select the audience location and the percentage (%) of the audience size. 

YOU CAN EXCLUDE SOME AUDIENCES

Meta Ads has an option for you to exclude some audiences because excluding specific audiences from your campaigns means that you are only spending money targeting those audiences who can actually benefit from your products or services. Excluding some target audiences will help campaigns focus on users who are likely to convert and potentially improve click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates. 

Meta Ads allows you to exclude audiences on ‘Custom Audiences’ and ‘Detailed Targeting’ options.

 

Conclusion

Understanding and leveraging the intricacies of Meta Ads targeting options is paramount for businesses aiming to make meaningful connections with their audiences. Whether it's honing in on demographics, interests, life events, or leveraging custom and lookalike audiences, Meta Ads provides a robust toolkit to refine campaigns and maximise impact.

By delving into these meta ads targeting options with precision and strategy, businesses can not only enhance their reach but also cultivate deeper engagements and foster lasting relationships with their target customers. So, as you embark on your advertising journey with Meta Ads, remember, the key to unlocking success lies in understanding your audience and harnessing the power of targeted paid social advertising.

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