When Do Targeting Inputs Matter?

Today’s targeting is a combination of advertiser inputs and Meta’s algorithmic distribution, with the aim to get you as many of your desired actions as possible within your budget. But advertisers have a common misunderstanding of how much control they actually have.

What I often hear from advertisers who want control is that they switch from Advantage+ Audience to original audiences because they don’t trust Meta’s algorithmic distribution. But more often than not, they’re dealing with algorithmic distribution there, too.

As someone who is focused on educating advertisers on how the systems work, it’s been an incredibly frustrating discussion. While it makes sense to me, it simply does not to most.

That’s why I wrote this post. And, more importantly, why I created the following grid.

Grid Comparison

When Do Targeting Inputs Matter?

Are your targeting inputs respected? Or they viewed as merely suggestions? Will your audience be expanded?

The grid above is a summary of how much your targeting inputs matter, depending on the setup. When you use Advantage+ Audience, your inputs are treated the same in all cases, regardless of the performance goal. But there are some contributing factors to how much your inputs matter when using original audiences.

An important point here is that we don’t know how much your audience suggestions matter, though my tests have indicated that they matter very little. We also don’t know how much your audience is expanded when expansion happens with original audiences, though my tests again suggest that it’s similar to when using Advantage+ Audience.

The problem here is that Meta provides little to no transparency on this matter. It’s entirely solvable, of course. I’ve long asked for a breakdown that would generate separate rows of results for our targeting inputs and those who were reached beyond them. Until that exists, we’re left guessing.

Still, we can approach this as if audience suggestions are as impactful to Advantage+ Audience as your targeting inputs that can be expanded when using original audiences. And when we do, we can provide a bit more clarity regarding what we can control and what we cannot.

Advantage+ Audience (Any Performance Goal)

Advantage+ Audience is largely algorithmically driven. That means that regardless of the performance goal, Meta will search out the people who are most likely to perform the action that you want. This freedom can help lower costs and improve results (not without some risk).

Respected Inputs:

Anything entered into Audience Controls within the ad set is a tight constraint that will be respected. Meta will not show ads to people outside of these controls.

Audience Controls

When you make customizations here, the following are respected…

Location

I often hear complaints that location isn’t actually respected, but that’s a misunderstanding of how location is controlled from the beginning.

Location Targeting

You will reach people who are either “living in or were recently in” your selected location. If a city, that will also include a radius of 10+ miles beyond it. You cannot isolate people who only live in a certain area.

Yes, location targeting is messy. But it doesn’t get messier as a result of using either Advantage+ Audience or original audiences. The same rules apply.

Minimum Age (18-25)

You can set a minimum age, but it can’t be any lower than 18 or higher than 25. How low you can go will depend upon the targeted country.

Age Minimum

Note that age maximum is not an audience control option.

Excluded Custom Audiences

You can also exclude people who are within a certain custom audience. An example would be excluding those who bought the specific product that you are promoting.

Excluded Custom Audiences

As is the case with locations, this method is not perfect. Custom audiences are almost never complete for various reasons, and you’re most likely to notice this with exclusions. If you reach a current customer while excluding them with custom audiences, it’s not because of whether you are using Advantage+ Audience or original audiences. These exclusions are treated the same in either case.

Languages

This control is unlikely to be used all that often.

Languages

As it says in the tooltip, Meta recommends specifying languages only when they aren’t common to your selected locations.

Audience Suggestions:

You can provide audience suggestions with Advantage+ Audience, but it is purely optional.

Advantage+ Audience

Meta says they will “prioritize audiences matching this profile before searching more widely.” So, that means that nothing you provide here is a tight constraint.

That includes settings for:

  • Custom Audiences
  • Age Range
  • Gender
  • Detailed Targeting (interests and behaviors)
Advantage+ Audience

Note that there is an audience control for age minimum that is respected, but there is also an age range that is only a suggestion. In other words, the range here (minimum and maximum) will only be seen as a suggestion and your ads can be shown to people outside of it if Meta believes it will lead to more of the actions that you want.

The age minimum within audience controls will be respected. But it doesn’t necessarily need to be the same setting as what is in audience suggestions. If you do set an age minimum in audience controls, you won’t be able to set a suggested range below it.

For example, when setting the audience control age minimum at 25, you can’t set the suggested minimum range below 25.

Age Minimum

A key takeaway here is that there are no audience controls for age maximum or gender.

Original Audiences (Conversions Performance Goal)

Maximize Conversions

If you switch to original audiences while using the performance goal to optimize for conversions or value, algorithmic expansion will be significant. This is when distribution is likely to be most similar to what you get when using Advantage+ Audience.

Understand that this has nothing to do with your campaign objective. For example, you can use the Sales objective but select the performance goal to Maximize Impressions. The factor that impacts these differences is the performance goal.

Respected Inputs:

  • Minimum Age
  • Maximum Age
  • Gender
  • Location
  • Custom Audience Exclusions
  • Language

Audience Expanded:

  • Lookalike Audiences
  • Detailed Targeting

This is where I’ve found advertisers are most surprised. When optimizing for conversions or value and you provide a lookalike audience for targeting, Advantage Lookalike is automatically turned on and cannot be turned off.

Advantage Lookalike

The same is the case for detailed targeting. If you provide detailed targeting, Advantage Detailed Targeting is automatically turned on and cannot be turned off.

Advantage Detailed Targeting

In theory, your audience will only be expanded if it will lead to more or better results. But all indications I’ve had is that your audience expands significantly in these cases.

It Depends:

You can provide custom audiences with original audiences, but whether your audience expands will depend upon whether you leave the box for Advantage Custom Audience checked. It will be checked by default.

Advantage Custom Audience

If it’s unchecked, you can run remarketing ads that only target people in your selected custom audiences. If you check that box, you’ll reach people well beyond that group. Based on my tests, that expansion is similar to what happens when providing custom audiences as suggestions with Advantage+ Audience.

Original Audiences (Link Clicks/Landing Page Views)

Link Clicks and Landing Page Views

Of course, what is expanded and what isn’t by default — and whether you can turn that expansion off — varies depending on your performance goal. If you select a performance goal to maximize link clicks or landing page views, things are slightly different.

Respected Inputs:

  • Minimum Age
  • Maximum Age
  • Gender
  • Location
  • Custom Audience Exclusions
  • Language

Audience Expanded:

Here, only Advantage Detailed Targeting is on by default without an option to turn it off.

Advantage Lookalike

This was a change that rolled out in early 2024.

It Depends:

When using original audiences, you will always have the option of turning Advantage Custom Audience off (assuming you remember to uncheck the box). When optimizing for link clicks or landing page views, you will also have the option of turning off Advantage Lookalike to focus on your selected lookalike audiences.

Advantage Lookalike

Original Audiences (Any Other Performance Goal)

For any other performance goal (Reach, Impressions, Post Engagement, ThruPlays, etc.), you’ll have slightly more control over whether your audience is expanded when using original audiences.

Respected Inputs:

  • Minimum Age
  • Maximum Age
  • Gender
  • Location
  • Custom Audience Exclusions
  • Language

Audience Expanded:

Nothing is expanded by default.

It Depends:

In this case, Advantage Detailed Targeting can be turned on if you so desire.

Advantage Detailed Targeting

Advantage Custom Audience and Advantage Lookalike are both optional.

What Should You Do?

So now you should understand that algorithmic distribution beyond your targeting inputs is likely to happen regardless of your decision to use Advantage+ Audience or original audiences. There are times when original audiences do give you more control. But that added control isn’t always required, or even beneficial.

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to this. But here is how I approach it…

1. When Using the Conversions Performance Goal and Purchase Conversion Event

Keep in mind that you can select conversion events other than Purchase. But when using Purchase as your goal conversion event, I recommend using Advantage+ Audience (if not Advantage+ Shopping). The algorithm will adjust in real-time to show your ads to people most likely to purchase. That flexibility should only help you.

Even if your clients are primarily women and you can’t set gender as an audience control, the algorithm should adjust when Purchase is your goal event. Meta doesn’t want to waste money on people who don’t lead to that action (this could be an issue for other types of optimization).

2. When Using the Conversions Performance Goal and Other Conversion Events

If you select a conversion event other than Purchase, I’d still recommend that you use Advantage+ Audience. However, you should monitor it closely to make sure that the algorithm doesn’t exploit weaknesses that may lead to low-quality results.

Once again, understand that the algorithm’s focus is getting you as many of the goal action that you want within your budget. That’s not an issue when the goal event is a purchase. You’re not in danger of getting low-quality purchases this way. But that could be an issue for leads or other actions.

But I emphasize the word “could.” Don’t assume it. I’ve actually seen it go both ways. I’ve used Advantage+ Audience to generate leads at a lower cost that are also at a high quality. And I’ve also seen the algorithm suddenly favor the highest age bracket, resulting in low-quality leads. And the issue, of course, is that we can’t set an audience control for age maximum.

3. When Using Any Other Performance Goal

This is a bit of a loaded hypothetical because I don’t recommend using other performance goals generally since there is always the potential for low-quality results. The reason is that the algorithm will always look to exploit weaknesses in placements or the user pool to get you as many of the action you want. That can be a big problem when optimizing for clicks or engagement.

The truth is that switching from Advantage+ Audience doesn’t solve this problem. But you can at least limit your audience pool by age maximum or gender, if that is important. And this is where it can be an issue if your business serves primarily women or a specific age group.

Why is it a problem? If you want post engagement or video views, Meta’s delivery algorithm only cares about getting you more post engagement or video views. It doesn’t care whether potential clients see your ads. If men click on your ads or watch your videos, Meta will take that as a signal that more men should see your ads.

Your Turn

How do you approach audience inputs and expansion?

Let me know in the comments below!