[FAQ]

I’m trying to improve my ad targeting beyond just basic interests and demographics. I keep seeing the option to create a ‘Lookalike Audience’ in Ads Manager, but I’m not entirely sure what its purpose is or how it works.

Can someone explain what this type of audience is for and how it helps you find new customers?

Thanks for the help!

[Jeff Bullas]

That is an excellent question.

Quick Answer: The purpose of a Lookalike Audience is to find new people on Facebook and Instagram who are very similar to your existing best customers. It is the platform’s most powerful tool for finding new customers at scale.

Instead of you having to manually guess which interests or demographics to target, you provide Facebook with a high-quality ‘source’ audience, and its algorithm goes out to find more people just like them. Here is a breakdown of how the process works.

First, you must have a ‘source audience’. This is a Custom Audience of at least 100 people from a single country that you have already created. The best source audiences are your most valuable lists, such as your existing customer email list, people who have made a purchase on your website, or a list of your most engaged social media followers.

Second, you then tell Facebook’s algorithm to analyse this source audience. The system looks at thousands of data points to identify the common characteristics, interests, and behaviours of the people on your high-quality list.

Third, Facebook then finds millions of other users on its platforms who ‘look like’ your source audience based on those shared attributes. You can choose how broad or narrow you want this new audience to be. For example, a ‘1% Lookalike’ is the group of people in a country who most closely match your source audience, while a ‘10% Lookalike’ is a much broader group.

This is so effective because it uses real data from your best customers to find new ones, which is far more accurate than manual interest targeting. By using a quality source audience, you leverage Facebook’s data to find new people who are highly likely to be interested in your business.

Cheers,

Jeff

[Author]

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