Here’s how Advantage expansion targeting works with Advantage Detailed Targeting, Advantage Lookalike, and Advantage Custom Audience.
If you enter detailed targeting in your ad set, you may see this message…
“Advantage Detailed Targeting: Reach people beyond your detailed targeting selections when it’s likely to improve performance.”
If you turn this on, Meta can expand your audience to reach people you didn’t target if it’s believed it can help you get better results. Depending on the objective, you may not be able to turn it off.
If you enter a lookalike audience, you may see this message…
“Advantage Lookalike: Reach people beyond your lookalike audiences when it is likely to improve performance.”
If you turn this on, Meta can expand your lookalike audience beyond the percentage you selected. Once again, depending on the objective, you may not be able to turn this off.
Finally, if you enter a custom audience, you may see this message…
“Advantage Custom Audience: Reach people beyond your custom audience when it is likely to improve performance.”
Luckily, you will always have the option of turning Advantage Custom Audience on or off.
What do we think about Meta expanding our targeting in this way? In theory, it’s only supposed to expand if it will help us get better results. And just because it’s on doesn’t mean that your audience will be expanded significantly.
The problem: We never know how much your audience is expanded, how much of your budget is spent on reaching the expanded audience, or how the expanded audience performed compared to your targeted audience.
It’s a complete unknown. Transparency would help.