As mentioned in the prior lesson about the history of Audience Segments, this feature changed my understanding of algorithmic targeting once it came to manual Sales campaigns.
To understand that, let me take you through the history of my own targeting strategies.
My Old Targeting Strategy
I’ve been doing this for a long time. This website was launched in the fall of 2011, and I’ve been covering primarily Facebook/Meta ads-related topics ever since.
But a common theme through the majority of the first 10-12 years was targeting. I experimented with and recommended various ways to isolate your ideal audience.
This exploded with custom audiences, which made remarketing possible. It started with our email list and expanded to website visitors, social media engagement, and so much more.
When writing or speaking on the topic of (then) Facebook advertising, I almost always stressed the importance of targeting. One of my most common claims was that bad targeting can’t save a good ad, but great targeting can get you results from bad ads.
Remarketing made up a solid 95% of my advertising strategy for much of that time. It was cheap and effective. We also can’t ignore that algorithmic targeting wasn’t a thing yet, and our targeting guardrails were necessary.
Algorithmic Targeting and a Loss of Transparency
Everything began to change with audience expansion about five years ago. It started with Detailed Targeting Expansion and Lookalike Expansion, which later became Advantage+ Detailed Targeting and Advantage+ Lookalike. Along the way came Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns and then Advantage+ Audience for manual Sales campaigns.
The trend line was less and less targeting control from the advertiser, with more trust required of the algorithm that your ads would reach the right people. But without some sort of evidence, that trust wasn’t easily earned.
As a result, many advertisers shunned algorithmic targeting. Some simply thought they were controlling things they weren’t. Others continued favoring remarketing strategies so that they knew their ads were being shown to people likely to convert.
The Light of Audience Segments
Admittedly, I was one of the many advertisers who was initially slow to embrace algorithmic targeting. I saw too many examples of Meta going off the rails when I didn’t control my audience. And remarketing gave me a sense of control without mystery.
Meta’s definition of Advantage+ Audience told us that remarketing would be prioritized by default.
Without doing anything at all, Meta said that past conversions, pixel data, and prior engagement with your ads would be prioritized. These are all ways we’d normally define “remarketing.”
Still, Meta saying this wasn’t the same as proof. Audience Segments were the bridge I needed.
My eyes opened wide the first time I used Audience Segments to break down my results. With completely wide open targeting, 10, 20, 30, or even 40 percent of my budget was spent on my Engaged Audience and Existing Customers. The distribution depended on the performance goal, budget, age of the ad, and more.
The beauty of Audience Segments is that they not only proved to me that remarketing happened naturally, but that the distribution between remarketing and prospecting was adjusted dynamically. Instead of having to determine those budget splits myself, Meta balanced costs, frequency, and likelihood of conversion to distribute my ads optimally.
I was immediately sold, and I continue to be.
The Difference
Not nearly enough advertisers use Audience Segments, and it’s obvious by the outdated strategies so many continue to use.
In fact, there’s a very easy test to determine whether someone is using Audience Segments to regularly break down their results. Are they using old remarketing strategies? If they are, it’s evidence they haven’t yet gained the trust in algorithmic targeting to let Meta do it for them.
If they aren’t, they are undoubtedly using Audience Segments. They’ve proven to themselves that remarketing happens naturally anyway, so they don’t need to go through those multiple ad sets anymore.
Now that you understand the history and value of Audience Segments, let’s help you define yours so that you can get access to this information for yourself.
Free Mini-Course
Whatever Happened to Targeting Control?
You now know that Meta reaches your remarketing audiences without you asking. But what happened to all those targeting levers — the interests, lookalikes, demographics, and custom audiences we used to obsess over? In my free Modern Targeting mini-course, I walk through what changed, what’s left, and why fighting algorithmic targeting only makes things worse. If you’ve been clinging to old targeting strategies, this course will show you why it’s time to let go.
