Should You Restrict by Demographic Group?

It sounds logical.

You’ve broken down your results to find the cheapest cost per conversion. You isolate the highest performing group as women between 35 and 44. So all of your ad sets target this group, thinking you’ll get more conversions.

Demographic Targeting

It probably won’t work.

Understand that I’m not referring to the cases where your product is only for women or you can’t sell to people under a certain age. You’ve found a variance in performance that you hope to exploit.

This is what we call trying to outsmart the algorithm. There was a time when it made some sense because the algorithm wasn’t all that smart.

But if you’re optimizing for conversions, delivery will update in real-time using machine learning. Those adjustments are based on results but also predictions related to how people have behaved before.

It may learn that mainly women between the ages of 35 and 44 buy, and a larger chunk of your budget will be spent there. But it will find you conversions outside of that restriction as well.

It may seem logical that restricting your audience to a high-performing tighter demographic group would be effective. But it’s often counterproductive.

Keeping a wider net will also help limit your costs. There’s no easier path to high CPMs than by restricting your potential audience.

There are always exceptions to this rule, but they’re rare. In most cases, your overthinking just makes it more expensive.

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