4. Detailed Targeting

Detailed targeting is also known as interests and behaviors. Meta categorizes people based on their profile info, engagement with Meta apps, and data from third-party partners.

How Things Were

There was a time when interests and behaviors represented one of the primary ways advertisers could reach our ideal audience. In more primitive times, it was very powerful.

We had full control over the people we reached. Facebook (before it was Meta) had crazy amounts of data on people because of the high levels of engagement on the app. People shared who they were, where they were, and what they were interested in without prompting. They liked pages representing businesses and hobbies that aligned with their interests.

Because advertisers had control, detailed targeting was critical. This was the way we defined our audience before there was any other way to do it. We considered the characteristics of our current customers and tried to redefine that group to find more people like them.

What Changed

I guess you can say the change started around the time of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Once the general public started understanding the damage that could be done with behavior targeting, these advertising tools came under significant scrutiny.

The change was slow-moving, but detailed targeting today looks nothing like it did years ago. Meta regularly removes interests and behaviors that are either redundant or can be used in a discriminatory way. But the biggest change is less about what can be targeted and more about whether the inputs matter at all.

Advantage+ Audience is on by default, which would make any detailed targeting inputs an audience suggestion.

While you can turn off Advantage+ generally, whether or not you can restrict the audience to your detailed targeting depends on the performance goal. If you use a performance goal that maximizes the number of conversions, link clicks, landing page views, instant form leads, calls, and a few others, you will not have the option to turn off audience suggestions.

For several top-of-the-funnel performance goals, like impressions or daily unique reach, you still have the ability to remove suggestions.

But I recommend you almost exclusively use performance goals related to conversions and leads. So your detailed targeting inputs will almost always be used as suggestions.

How to Approach Detailed Targeting

Now that detailed targeting inputs are almost always used as audience suggestions, it’s impossible to determine how effective those inputs are. Meta once said your suggestions were prioritized prior to going broader, but that’s far less definitive now.

All we know is that Meta’s going to reach people beyond your detailed targeting inputs if doing so is likely to improve performance. We have no idea how much your inputs matter, if they matter in some cases more than others, or if they’re merely window dressing to make you feel like you have some control.

What I have been able to determine is that suggestions related to age, gender, and even custom audiences are virtually pointless. You can prove this with breakdowns by age, gender, or audience segments (if the audience segments match the custom audiences used as suggestions). In all of my tests, I’ve seen no correlation to suggestions making a difference.

Might detailed targeting suggestions make a difference? Sure, they might. But we also don’t know if there are some situations when they make more of a difference than others. Until Meta provides a breakdown to prove it, we’re left guessing.

And when that’s the case, I can say one thing definitively: There is no reason to treat detailed targeting inputs as tight constraints.

Years ago, we might create separate ad sets targeting different groups of interests and behaviors. We did this primarily to help isolate the best combinations of detailed targeting inputs. But you should absolutely not do that now.

If you were to create three ad sets with different detailed targeting these days, you’d have three ad sets that have the potential of reaching all of the same people. Why? Because those inputs are suggestions, not tight constraints. And when that happens, you unnecessarily create auction overlap, water down your budget, and drive up costs.

Can detailed targeting suggestions hurt? Probably not. If you want to use them, use them. But don’t treat detailed targeting as tight constraints. Don’t obsess over finding the “right” combination of interests and behaviors.

While that may have made sense 7-10 years ago, it’s pointless now. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Meta eventually removes detailed targeting inputs altogether and leans entirely into algorithmic targeting. While that’s essentially the case now, the suggestions give the illusion of control that you don’t really have.

Bottom line is this: It’s not that algorithmic targeting is amazing and will always beat your tight restrictions. The problem is that you simply can’t restrict by targeting inputs anymore, so it’s pointless to fight it.

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