In this lesson, we will go over how to create New, Custom and Lookalike Audiences in Ads Manager.
- Reasonably priced quality food.
- Large wine selection.
This lesson will prepare you to:
- Create new audiences, Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences when you create ads in Meta Ads Manager.
Audiences in Ads Manager
As we just learned, you can use Meta Ads Manager to find new customers based on certain characteristics, get in touch with people who already know a business and reach new people similar to current customers.
Create a new audience
New audience is the default audience for an ad set in Ads Manager. To define a new audience, you can select characteristics such as location, demographics, interests, behaviours and connections.
Let's look at how Tahrrisha defined one Little Lemon audiences she named Busy Professionals.*
Need
Characteristics
Aged 46-55.
Married women and men.
Household income over USD 150,000.
Professionals.
Live in or around Chicago.
Interests and behaviours
Drinks wine.
Eats Italian food.
Orders delivery and takeaways from mobile apps regularly.
*Disclaimer: Little Lemon is a fictitious business designed by Meta creative shop. Any similarities to content produced by real-life businesses aren't intentional.
Tahrrisha uses this information to develop a new audience in Ads Manager.
Use the hotspots to learn more.
New ad set
Create an audience at the ad set level
Location
Chicago, IL, US
Age
Ages 46–55
Gender
All genders
Detailed targeting
Interested in Mediterranean food
Audience definition
The audience definition scale indicates whether an audience is too specific or too broad, based on the audience characteristics you added. Ideally, an audience should be within the green zone of the scale.
Estimated audience size
This number is an estimate of the size of the audience that's eligible to see your ad. The estimate is based on your targeting criteria and your selected ad placements.
Businesses can use new audiences to segment their advertising and reach people most likely to engage with their ads. To refine their targeting, businesses can also test multiple audiences and discover new insights. Next, let's explore Custom Audiences.
Create a Custom Audience
Custom Audiences enable you to connect with people who have already shown interest in a business. Businesses can use different sources of information to create Custom Audiences.
To create awareness for the new pastry chef who just joined Little Lemon, Tahrrisha ran a video campaign that featured new menu items. She wants to follow this up with a new ad campaign to show people who saw the video ad a special promotion for a meal and dessert deal.
Tahrrisha creates a Custom Audience in Ads Manager of people who watched at least 10 seconds of her videos.
Use the arrows to learn more.
Select create new audience. Next, select create new, which will open a drop-down menu. Then choose Custom Audience from the drop-down menu.
Next, select the source for your Custom Audience. Here, Tahrrisha selects video as her source.
As Tahrrisha will use video as a source, she needs to input some additional details about her video source.
Note that this page may look different based on the source you select.
Finally, Tahrrisha can enter an audience name and optional description. Now she can target her ads to people who watched the Little Lemon video ad and encourage them to visit the website to place an order for the meal and dessert deal.
Custom Audiences are a great way to continue the conversation with people a business has already engaged with. Now let's explore how business can reach new people with Lookalike Audiences.
Create a Lookalike Audience
Lookalike Audiences enable businesses to reach new people who are similar to their current customers. Lookalike Audiences are an effective way to connect with people likely to respond to ads.
To create a Lookalike Audience, follow the same first steps as you would when creating a Custom Audience. Select create new, and choose Lookalike Audience from the drop-down menu.
Select your source audience
As we discussed before, when you create a Lookalike Audience, you start from a source audience. Meta technologies use the source audience to identify the common qualities of the people in it, such as demographic information or interests, and find similar people.
Let's look at how Tahrrisha creates a Lookalike Audience to reach people who are likely to use the Little Lemon delivery service to attract new high-value customers who haven't interacted with the website yet.
Use the hotspots below to see the information you need to build a lookalike audience.
Select lookalike source.
The source you select helps find people who share similar traits. People in your source audience will be excluded from your lookalike audience unless you use a Pixel as your source audience.
A value-based source that contains customer lifetime values can help to create a Lookalike Audience of people similar to your most valuable customers.
Select audience size
You can choose 1–10% of the total population in your target country, with the 1% being those who most closely match your source audience. You can create multiple lookalikes at a time with varying levels of similarity to your source.
For example, Tahrrisha uses Little Lemon website visitors as the source of her Lookalike Audience. She selects 1% to reach audiences with characteristics most similar to the source audience. From there, she can show ads to people who match the characteristics of current delivery service customers and reach more potential customers.
You can choose the size of a Lookalike Audience during the creation process. Smaller audiences generally match a source audience more closely. While larger audiences can increase potential reach and reduce the level of similarity between the Lookalike Audience and source audience, we recommend a source audience that's between 1,000 and 50,000 people. Source quality is also important. For example, if a source audience is made up of your best customers rather than all of your customers, that could lead to better results.
Remember:
- It can take 6 to 24 hours to create a Lookalike Audience. After that, the audience will refresh every three to seven days as long as you still actively target ads to it.
- You don't need to wait for a Lookalike Audience to update to use it for ad targeting.
- See the most recent updates to your Lookalike Audience by visiting the audience page in Ads Manager. Check the date under availability.
Businesses can use new audiences, Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences to find new customers and re-engage existing customers with ads. In the next lesson, discover tips to help you create audiences for your next campaign.
Key takeaways
Create new audiences, Custom Audiences and lookalike audiences to target your ads to existing customers and find new ones.