And now it’s time for the payoff.
Keep in mind that the definitions of your Audience Segments take effect at the time you save them. Your reporting will only reflect impressions that happen after that point. The same applies to changes made.
Within Ads Manager, use the Breakdown dropdown menu…
…and scroll down to Demographics. There you’ll find Audience Segments.
Once selected, your results will be broken down into rows for Engaged Audience, Existing Customers, and New Audience.
This is entirely based on your definitions in Advertising Settings. If Meta can match someone to custom audiences found in your Engaged Audience or Existing Customers, their impressions and actions will be segmented there. Otherwise, they’ll fall under “New Audience.”
I’ll cover what you can do with this information in the next lesson.
The Missing “Engaged” Audience
Something to keep in mind is that the definition of Meta’s Engaged Audience is limited to the custom audiences available. As discussed in a prior lesson, you cannot use custom audiences for Facebook Page, Instagram Account, or Video Views types.
What this means is that there will always be people who are aware of your brand and may even engage with you regularly, but they have yet to visit your website or be added to one of the custom audiences used to define your Audience Segments. As a result, you should view the Engaged Audience numbers in this light. That number is likely higher.
Unknown or Uncategorized
You will occasionally see results for “Unknown” or “Uncategorized.” It seems as though Meta has merged the two since I no longer see “Uncategorized.” So there are multiple reasons you might see “Unknown.”
“Unknown” may reflect that ads were delivered to people while your Audience Segments weren’t yet defined. I’ve also seen some results show as Unknown temporarily before they eventually move to one of the two Audience Segments.
When breaking down results for Sales campaigns where Audience Segments are defined, it’s normal to see some “Unknown,” but it should be minimal.
You may also see “Unknown” when attempting to break down results by Audience Segments when the campaign doesn’t qualify by objective. Recall that this feature is only available for the Sales objective.
This was previously marked with “Uncategorized,” but I’m seeing “Unknown” there now.
I also once saw a high percentage of “Unknown” when there was a bug with my Audience Segments. There’s a full summary of all of the various reasons that you may see “Unknown” here.
The main items to remember here…
1. All results will appear as “Unknown” if you’re attempting to break down a campaign by Audience Segments that isn’t a Sales campaign.
2. Results will appear as “Unknown” if your Audience Segments aren’t defined during all or a portion of the time period you’re viewing.
3. Some results will appear as “Unknown” at least temporarily, and Meta may eventually move those impressions to one of the segments.
4. A small percentage of “Unknown” is normal, even if your Audience Segments were set up fully for the time period you’re viewing for Sales campaigns.
5. If you see a high percentage of “Unknown” that can’t be explained by any of the above, there may be a reporting or updating bug.
In the next lesson, we’ll discuss how we can use this valuable information…
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