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How to upload lookalike audience on facebook


How to Use Facebook Lookalike Audiences: The Complete Guide

Facebook Lookalike Audiences can help you find your new best customers. It’s a powerful tool for better Facebook ad targeting—drawing learnings about your most successful customers to find new people who are likely to be good customers, too.

Think of it as a sophisticated audience matchmaker for marketers. You tell Facebook what you like in a customer, and Facebook a delivers a new audience segment filled with prospects that meet your criteria.

Ready to find the audience of your dreams? Read on to learn how to create a Lookalike Audience for your Facebook ads, plus tips that will help you find the best match.

Bonus: Download a free guide that shows you how to save time and money on your Facebook ads. Find out how to reach the right customers, lower your cost-per-click, and more.  

What are Facebook Lookalike Audiences?

Facebook Lookalike Audiences can be used to reach people who are similar to your current customers. They increase the probability of generating high-quality leads and offer more value on ad spend.

Lookalike Audiences are formed based on source audiences. You can create a source audience (also known as a seed audience) using data from:

  • Customer Information. A newsletter subscription list or a customer file list. You can either upload a .txt or .csv file, or copy and paste your information.
  • Website Visitors. To create a custom audience based on website visitors, you need to have Facebook pixel installed. With pixel, you create an audience of people who have visited your website, looked at a product page, completed a purchase, etc.
  • App activity. With active Facebook SDK event tracking, app administrators can collect data on the people who have installed your app. There are 14 pre-defined events that can be tracked such as, “added to the basket” for retails apps, or “level achieved” for game apps.
  • Engagement. An engagement audience is comprised of people who engaged with your content on Facebook or Instagram. Engagement events include: video, lead form, canvas and collection, Facebook page, Instagram business profile, and event.
  • Offline activity. You can create a list of people who interacted with your business in person, by phone, or another offline channel.

Multiple Lookalike Audiences can be used at the same time for the same ad campaign. You can also pair Lookalike Audiences with other ad targeting parameters, such as age and gender or interests and behaviors.

How to use Facebook Lookalike Audiences

Step 1: From the Facebook Ads Manager, go to Audiences.

Step 2: Click Create audience and choose Lookalike Audience.

Step 3: Choose your source audience. Remember, this will be a custom audience you’ve created from customer information, Pixel or app data, or fans of your page.

Note: Your source audiences needs to contain at least 100 people from the same country.

Step 4: Select the countries or regions you would like to target. The countries you choose will determine where people in your Lookalike Audience are based, adding a geo-filter onto your Lookalike Audience.

Note: You don’t have to have anyone from the country you want to target in your source.

Step 5: Choose your desired audience size. Size is expressed on a scale of 1-10. Smaller numbers have high similarity and larger numbers have high reach. Facebook will provide you with an estimated reach for the size you choose.

Note: It can take between six and 24 hours for your Lookalike Audience to be finished, but you can still proceed to ad creation.

Step 6: Create your ad. Go to the Adverts Manager and click Tools, then Audiences, to see if your Lookalike Audience is ready. If it is, select it and click Create Advert.

Feel like you’ve got a handle on Lookalike Audiences? The video below goes into even more detail.


9 tips for using Facebook Lookalike Audiences

Find the right source audience and use these tips to reach new people on Facebook.

1. Use the right source audience for your goals

Different custom audiences match different goals.

For example, if your goal is to drive awareness of your business, a Lookalike Audience based on your Page Fans may be a good idea.

If your goal is to increase online sales, then a Lookalike Audience based on website visitors will be a better choice.

2. Get creative with Custom Audiences

You can create custom audiences around a variety of parameters. Drill down on the options that best align with your campaign goals.

Ideas for Custom Audiences include:

  • Video audience. If you’re launching a video-based campaign, create an audience based on people who have engaged with your videos in the past.
  • Recent website visitors. All website visitors may be too broad of a list, especially if conversions are your objective. Target people who have visited your website in the past 30 days, or visitors who have put something in their cart.
  • Email audience. Newsletter subscribers are interested in receiving news and deals about your business. Use this audience to get more subscribers, or if you’re planning a campaign with similar content.

3. Test your Lookalike Audience size

Consider different audience sizes for different campaign goals.

Smaller audiences (1-5 on the scale) will most closely match your custom audience, whereas large audiences (6-10 on the scale) will increase your potential reach, but decrease the level of similarity with your custom audience. If you’re optimizing for similarity, aim for a smaller audience. For reach, go large.

4. Choose high-quality data

The better the data you provide, the better the results.

Facebook recommends between 1,000 and 50,000 people. But an audience of 500 loyal customers with always perform better than an audience of 50,000 good, bad, and average customers.

Avoid broad audiences like “all website visitors” or “all app installers.” These large audiences will include great customers along with those who bounce after a short time.

Hone in on the metrics that determine your best customers. Often these are further down the conversion or engagement funnel.

5. Keep your audience list up-to-date

If you’re providing your own customer information, make sure it’s as current as possible. If you’re creating a custom audience with Facebook data, add date range parameters.

For example, if you’re adding a custom audience based on website visitors, you may only want to target those who have visited your website in the last 30 to 90 days.

Lookalike audiences update dynamically every three to seven days, so anyone new who visits will be added to your Lookalike Audience.

6. Use Lookalike Audiences in combination with other features

Enhance your lookalike audience targeting by adding more targeting parameters such as age, gender, or interests.

To launch its home theatre speaker, PLAYBASE, Sonos developed a multi-tier campaign that used Lookalike Audiences in combination with video ads, link ads, and Facebook dynamic ads. Phase one of the campaign targeted existing customers and new ones based on their interests, and phase two retargeted video viewers and Lookalike Audiences based on phase one engagements.

The one-two punch campaign delivered 19 times the return on ad spend.

Bonus: Download a free guide that shows you how to save time and money on your Facebook ads. Find out how to reach the right customers, lower your cost-per-click, and more.  

Get the free guide right now!

Make sure to take full advantage of the hyper-targeting capabilities of Lookalike Audiences with high quality ads. Read our full guide to Facebook ad formats and best practices.

7. Optimize bids with a set of Lookalike Audiences

Use your most effective audience to segment Lookalike Audiences into non-overlapping tiers.

To do this, click Advanced Options when selecting your audience size. You can create up to 500 Lookalike Audiences from just one source audience.

For example, you could segment an audience based on the most similar, second most similar, and least similar lookalikes, and bid accordingly on each.

Source: Facebook

8. Pinpoint the right locations

Lookalike Audiences are a great way to target expansion in new global markets.

Most often marketers know where they’re looking for new acquisitions. If global domination is your aim (or you’re not sure where to focus), consider creating a Lookalike Audience in app store countries or emerging markets.

Source: Facebook

Facebook will always prioritize similarity over location. That means your Lookalike Audience may not be evenly distributed between your locations.

Sunglasses retailer 9FIVE wanted to extend their US campaign to Canada and Australia, so it created an international Lookalike Audiences based on current customers in both countries. Ads were also segmented per region and targeted with unique dynamic ads. They lowered cost per acquisition by 40 percent, and achieved 3.8 times the return on ad spend.

Source: Facebook

9. Try the Customer Lifetime Value Option

If your business involves customer transactions and engagements that take place over a longer period of time, consider creating a customer lifetime value (LTV) custom audience. But even if not, Value-based Lookalike Audiences can help separate your big spenders from the not-so-big spenders since they factor in consumer CRM data.

To optimize for its The Walking Dead: No Man’s Land release, Next Games created a standard Lookalike Audience of paying app users and a value-based Lookalike Audience. By comparison, the value-based audience delivered a 30 percent higher return on ad spend.

Source: Facebook

“We saw a measured uplift in performance when comparing value-based Lookalike Audiences with standard Lookalike Audiences built using identical seed audiences and would recommend testing value-based Lookalike Audiences,” said Next Games CMO, Saara Bergström.

Important links

  • Blueprint course on Lookalike Audiences
  • Custom audience from mobile app
  • Custom audience from your website (pixel)  

Become a social advertising pro with Hootsuite Academy’s Advanced Social Ads training. Master expert tactics and best practices for Facebook ads and more.

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How to Use Facebook Lookalike Audiences the Right Way

Wish you could take the guesswork out of your social ad targeting?

Don’t we all.

Sure, it’s awesome that marketers have so many choices when it comes to our Facebook advertising strategy and who we serve our ads to.

But navigating the numerous targeting options and factors can be downright daunting.

That’s where Facebook Lookalike Audiences are a game-changer.

Rather than start each campaign from scratch or tweak a bunch of targeting factors, Lookalike Audiences lets you base new ads on your existing audience.

The result? More engagement and conversions with a lot less guessing.

In this guide, we’ll break down the basics of Facebook Lookalike Audiences and what marketers need to know to get started.

What is a Lookalike Audience, Anyway?

Facebook Lookalike Audiences represent an ad-targeting option for a totally new target audience that shares characteristics with your existing ones, based on previous engagements with your business account or ads.

The concept here is simple. Instead of researching a new audience manually, Facebook figures out who’d be most likely to click through your campaigns on your behalf. This is determined by factors such as interests, interactions (think: “likes,” comments, shares) and previous ad clicks.

While Lookalike Audiences are ideal for marketers that have run ads successfully in the past, they’re fair game for first-timers as well. That’s because Facebook allows you to create Lookalike Audiences based on:

  • People who like and follow your Business Page
  • Conversion pixels you’ve created in the past
  • Existing custom audiences

In addition to more accurate targeting by default, this format also provides more experienced advertisers with customization and flexibility. For example, you can broaden your Lookalike Audience to your liking or keep new ad targets almost identical to your own.

If nothing else, Facebook does a pretty good job of holding marketers’ hands through the process of creating a Lookalike Audience to make sure they’re relevant. Doing so is in the best interest of the platform, after all.

Why use Facebook Lookalike Audiences versus other ad formats?

Again, there are plenty of ad formats on Facebook to choose from. What makes Lookalike Audiences so special?

Below are some of the key benefits:

  • They save you a ton of time. If you’ve already gone through the legwork of fine-tuning a Custom Audience, you’ve done the hard part. Lookalike Audiences allow you to squeeze more out of what you’ve already established.
  • In theory, Lookalike Audiences are “proven” versus creating something cold. That’s because they’re based on parameters that show user interest.
  • Lookalike Audiences can easily supplement your existing ads. For the sake of stretching your social media budget, Lookalike Audiences allow you to experiment and target multiple audiences at once without running totally different campaigns.

What scenarios are Facebook Lookalike Audience ads ideal for?

Good question. Let’s look at some of the most common scenarios, for reference:

  • You’re interested in engaging a new audience. Let’s say you want to reach a previously untapped demographic. With a Lookalike Audience, you can expand your targeting without going totally off-base in terms of interests.
  • Your existing ad audience isn’t engaging like it used to. If you suspect you’ve exhausted your customers as-is or your base is too small, these types of ads can help you test the waters.
  • You want to compare two different audiences against each other. Again, Lookalike Audiences can supplement any of your current ads. Comparing performance might open your eyes to new opportunities without blowing out your budget.

What do Lookalike Audience ads look like in action?

In reality, ads based on Lookalike Audiences resemble any other successful Facebook campaign in terms of creatives.

Here are a few examples from Facebook’s own ad success stories which highlight how such ads can be used, piggybacking on the same scenarios we discussed earlier.

This ad from the Teaching Company highlights how Lookalike Audiences can be used to explore new ad targets in terms of geography. For this campaign, the company took a US-only ad and served it in Canada, the UK and Australia based on their best customers. The end result was a 10x boost in monthly average subscriptions to their service.

Here’s another example from Shipt. For this ad, the brand created multiple Lookalike Audiences based on current and past customers. Experiencing a 14-point lift in conversions, this is yet another shining example of how targeting based on your existing audience can be so effective.

This campaign from OLIPOP included Lookalike Audiences of top purchasers as part of a budget experiment, attempting to determine whether increased spending resulted in diminishing returns. The brand found that ramping up their efforts resulted in a significant lift in conversions and add-to-cart events alike.

How to create a Lookalike Audience on Facebook

Let’s say you’re interested in putting together your first Lookalike Audience.

Excellent!  First things first: log into your Facebook Ads Manager account. On the left-hand corner, you’ll see the “Create Audience” dropdown.

Again, the platform makes the creation process fairly straightforward but the number of options to choose from can be overwhelming. The breakdown below can help speed things up.

1. Select your audience source

From the word “go,” you have the options we talked about earlier: Pages, Facebook Pixel or an existing Custom Audience.

Facebook recommends using “events with value” (AKA value-based sources). That’s because such targeting is based on actual past customer purchasing data. For example, creating a Lookalike Audience based on a remarketing Pixel allows you to base your campaigns around targets with higher (or lower) average order values.

If you opt to use a Custom Audience as your source, make sure to familiarize yourself with the various Facebook ad targeting options available. For example, you can upload a customer list or base your Lookalike Audience on people who’ve interacted with your website.

 

2. Choose your audience location

No big surprises here. Once you select a source, you’ll be prompted to select a region for your Lookalike Audience.

Again, this is helpful if you’re looking to run or experiment with international marketing. This selection allows you to find relevant ad targets based on geography.

3. Determine your audience size

Finally, you have a choice to choose just how “alike” your Lookalike Audience is.

The smaller the percentage here, the more similar your audience is to your source audience. On the flip side, a larger number makes your audience broader.

Whether you want a super similar audience or a larger one really depends on your goals and budget. Like any type of Facebook ad targeting, a little bit of experimentation goes a long way.

Note: Lookalike Audience specs and requirements

Before you’re allowed to create your audience, there are a few parameters you need to familiarize yourself with. Although Facebook will prompt you on some of these, make sure to consider the following:

  • Your audience size must be at least 100 people from the same country
  • Facebook recommends between 1,000 and 50,000 of your “best” customers based on lifetime value, order size, or engagement for optimal Lookalike Audiences
  • It can take between six and 24 hours for your audience to actually be created

More tips for Facebook advertising and targeting

Using targeting tactics like Lookalike Audiences can bring your ad campaigns to the next level. Make sure everything from content to budget is also optimized with these resources:

  • How to foolproof your Facebook advertising strategy
  • How to Master Facebook Ad Targeting & Zero-In on Your Audience
  • Facebook advertising cost: Everything you need to optimize your ROI
  • A step-by-step guide on how to use Facebook Business Manager
  • 5 brilliant Facebook campaigns (& why they worked)
  • 12 Facebook Ad Examples You Wish You Made

What can my Facebook Lookalike campaigns teach me?

Just like any other type of ad data, you should note how your Lookalike Audience performs and look at your KPIs.

If your campaigns perform similarly or significantly better than your previous ones, you’re golden. If not, you might consider some tweaking (think: pulling back or ramping up your audience size, experimenting with Custom Audiences versus Pixel, etc).

Either way, make sure you’re keeping an eye on your metrics. You should also assess not only how your ads compare against each other, but how your paid performance compares against your organic social posts.

With tools like Sprout Social, you can use our paid ad reporting and analytics to do exactly that. With a holistic view of your Facebook presence, you can better determine your budget in terms of time and resources.

 

Are you taking full advantage of Facebook Lookalike audiences?

Lookalike Audiences are an invaluable tool for social marketers.

Like any other type of ad, they can take time to master but are worth pursuing for the sake of experimenting and reaching new audiences.

Now that you know how to create a Lookalike Audience on Facebook, perhaps it’s time to consider how such ads fit into your paid social strategy.

And if you need to secure a bigger budget to expand your campaigns, we’ve got you covered. Make sure to check out our guide on making a business case for social media to get the buy-in that you need to run a new campaign.

How to create look-a-like audiences on Facebook - ppc.world

This article was written in 2019. We updated it in December 2021. Enjoy reading!

What are Lookalike Audiences or look-alikes in Facebook

Lookalike Audiences can be used to reach users who are similar to those who have already become a customer. The system selects similar users according to different criteria: gender, age, geolocation, interests, online behavior, etc.

How this tool is useful and convenient for the advertiser:

  1. Increases coverage. By adding Lookalike Audiences to your targeting list, you can show your ads to a much larger number of people.

  2. Aimed at potentially interested users. It is likely that people similar to existing customers are interested in the same products and services. They are more likely to place an order.

  3. Allows you to find new customers that are similar to current ones. It is easier and more convenient to work with such users, there is no need to radically change the approach.

  4. Flexible settings. To keep your audience fresh, you can add new data sources and remove old data sources.

Look-alikes on Facebook are sourced from other - original - audiences. These include audiences:

  • based on pixel data;

  • based on lists of existing and potential customers, for this you need to upload a file with user data: phone numbers, email addresses, etc.;

  • based on data from mobile applications;

  • collected from users interacting with your Facebook ad or page.

Look-alike is one of the most effective types of targeting for working with cold audiences. Compared to an affinity audience, lookalike audiences select users who are as close as possible to existing customers, which means they are more interested in buying. Let's walk through the process of creating a Lookalike Audience in Facebook Ads Manager.

How to create a Lookalike Audience on Facebook

Before you start working with Lookalike Audiences, there are a few things to keep in mind.

  1. To create a look-alike , you need to be an administrator of a business page or pixel from which the system collects data about the original audience.

  2. A similar audience is not formed immediately, it takes from 6 to 24 hours to collect users. The audience will then refresh every 3-7 days until you turn off ads targeting this audience.

  3. You can use a Lookalike Audience without waiting for it to be updated.

  4. The source audience must include at least 100 people from one country.

  5. Based on one source audience , you can create up to 500 Lookalike Audiences.

How to create a Lookalike Audience step by step

Go to Audiences.

Click the blue Create Audience button and select Lookalike Audience.

Select source. You can specify an existing one (pixel data, page or site visitors, custom audience, etc.) or create a new one.

Locate the audience. The system gives hints about what other countries can be added besides those that are added by default.

Set the Lookalike Audience size using the slider and also define how many Lookalike Audiences you want to create.

Once you've set all the options, click "Create Audience". You will have to wait while the system collects users and forms an audience.

Once the data is collected, the audience can be used in ads. Start creating your ad in Ads Manager and in the Audience section, click Individual. Custom Audience" - "Lookalike Audience" and select the audience you want to use from the list.

You can also create a new Lookalike Audience here. To do this, in the block "Individual. Custom Audience" click "Create" - "Lookalike Audience". It is configured in the same way as in the previous creation method.

In the future, as mentioned above, the audience will be updated periodically. To see the date the audience was last updated, you will need to go to the "Audiences" section. The date is displayed in the "Availability" column.

Tips for working with Lookalike Audiences

Finally, here are some simple tips that will make ads using Lookalike Audiences even more effective.

  1. Settings allow you to specify the size of the Lookalike Audience. The smaller it is, the more users in this audience will be similar to users in the original one. If you specify a large size, you can significantly increase the reach, but the similarity with the original audience will be less. Facebook recommends setting an audience size of 1,000-50,000 people, although of course this depends on the business and the objectives of the advertising campaign.

  2. Also keep in mind the quality of the original audience. For example, do not include all customers in it, but those who have more conversions, higher average bill, etc. Based on them, the system will select a more effective lookalike audience.

  3. Use multiple Lookalike Audiences for the same ad group. This will show your ad to people in any of the selected Lookalike Audiences and significantly increase your ad reach.

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How to create Look-alike audiences for Facebook and Instagram targeting

Instructions for use: who needs it, how to build and use it

Editor's note: It's a pleasure to present the academy graduate and her first article. Moreover, it wonderfully complements the publication of Pavel Beskhitrov.

LAL, lookalike, lookalike audiences are all names for the best Facebook and Instagram targeting tool. It works on custom audiences for remarketing. These audiences are collected considering a number of criteria from different sources.

What are audience selection criteria for? Custom and similar audiences allow you to work with hot and warm, potentially interested audiences. Maximum hit on target ( English - target ).

  • Custom Audiences are remarketing audiences that gather your former, current or potential customers: visitors to a business page or website; people who interacted with your content and/or completed targeted actions.
  • Similar are audiences created based on a specific source (custom audience). People included in such a list are as similar as possible to the source by many criteria, for example: gender, age, geo, interests, online behavior. Lookalike audiences are an effective targeting tool, they allow you to show your ad exactly to the audience for which the offer is most likely to be relevant.

How do I create custom audiences?

Custom audiences are created from a variety of sources: a website, an Instagram business profile or Facebook page, your personal customer data files, and so on. Based on such audiences, similar audiences are created that correspond as closely as possible to those people who have already interacted with you.

You can start working with audiences by going to Ads manager — Facebook ads manager. In the "Resources" tab, you need the "Audiences" item.

Then, click "Create Audience" → "Custom Audience".

Select the collection criterion we need:

1. Client data file.

2. Website traffic.

3. Actions in applications.

4. Engagement (Both Facebook and Instagram after the last RK update).

Method 1: Customer data file

This option is ideal for those who have enough initial data on existing customers.

It often happens that there is no data to create an audience, for various reasons. In this case, you will have to wait until you accumulate a customer base on the basis of which you can create an audience, ideally having a base of 1000 real cell numbers and e-mail. Sometimes it takes several months.

If you are launching an advertisement for a B2B project, then you can not wait, but use the Clients.su service. The service provides access (shares) to already collected and tested audiences based on cell numbers and e-mail of managers, owners, entrepreneurs from various business segments, from beauty salons to construction companies.

By the way, the service provides a free trial period for new users. So, who launches advertising for B2B projects, I advise you to test ready-made audiences from Clients.su

1.1 15 different identifiers are available. Often several are used at once, for example: name, email, phone number, city / country.

IMPORTANT: Feel free to read the hints that Facebook offers! The screenshot below highlights important points that you need to familiarize yourself with before creating an audience based on your customers' data. See the recommendations and download the file template. By the way, a common mistake is the wrong format of the uploaded file, you need CSV (Excel) or TXT (plain text file).

1.2 Users of the MailChimp email marketing service can log in to upload their customer addresses and match them with Facebook users.

1.3 New in working with customer data: Customer Lifecycle Value (LTV) file. Facebook is committed to ensuring that you target your ads as accurately and effectively as possible.

Don't forget to read the hints! The link highlighted in the screenshot above explains how to correctly format customer data: all 15 identifiers (see 1.1) and Value - values.

Facebook recommends creating a lookalike based on this custom audience. It is suitable for trade-related businesses and for long-term business goals where the return on advertising costs is important.

Method 2: Traffic from the site

The perfect way to catch up with people who have visited your site on a social network. Remarketing (retargeting) in this case allows you to return your current or potential customers who visited any or the page of the site / blog you specified within a certain time.

Option 1 involves collecting each user who visited ANY page of the site. It is recommended to use the 2nd option and manually enter the site URL:

Depending on your product / service, you need to select the time period for which the collection will take place. Maximum possible value: 180 days. You can create multiple audiences. For example, if you assume that your product may be needed again by the buyer in a week (dog food, for example), the period will be 7 days. After a few months - from 60 days and above.

The 3rd option helps to collect an audience that visits certain pages. In this case, you can exclude people who visited other URl. For example, you want to show your ad only to people who have placed an item in their cart but haven't completed their purchase. So "thank you page" will be in the exceptions.

The 4th option collects an audience of people who did not visit the site for up to six months + those who were, but did not return.

In all 4 options, the minimum time period is 1 day, and the maximum is 180 days.

IMPORTANT: structure your audience names so that they are easy to remember and understand. If you create a lot of audiences, then finding the right one when setting up ads will be inconvenient. It helps to search by name, which should clearly describe it.

Method 3: Actions in applications

Everything is extremely simple here: create audiences of people who have installed your application or game. By making a lookalike audience (more on that later), ad performance can improve significantly.

Method 4: Engagement

Lists of people who interacted with your content on Facebook and Instagram (as of July 2017, not all ad accounts have received this update, which allows collecting audiences from Instagram business profiles, so be patient).

The easiest to use are: 4.1 (video), 4.5 (Facebook page), 4.6 (Instagram business profile). They allow you to collect the largest audiences, since, in principle, fewer advertisers use the lead generation tool and the canvas.

IMPORTANT: Some points can be used for both social networks, some - only for one of them.

But first things first.

The future of video content is here. It's no secret that Facebook prefers this kind of content in its algorithms. In addition, many have already understood the importance of live broadcasts as a way to communicate with the audience.

How to use it for your own purposes?

This method allows you to create audiences of people who have watched your videos. The most non-targeted will be 1 list, in which the degree of viewing is only 3 seconds. Due to the autoplay of the video, the assembled audience will be the least engaged. The most targeted will be the 6th list, in which the video has been watched almost completely. Who will watch the video on 95%? The one who was interested in him.

At this point, it's a good idea to create multiple audiences with different view depths to test the size of the original audience. Also, you can separately choose from which video (one or several) and from which social network the data will be collected.

The time period for which views can be analyzed is limited to 1 year (365 days).

4.2 Lead generation form (Facebook and Instagram) Lead generation is one of the goals in the RK, which allows you to collect user contact details (this is how landing pages work). Since all actions take place inside Facebook, it is possible to track everyone who interacted with the form.

An audience can include some forms and exclude others. The maximum period is 90 days.

There are 3 options to choose from:

  • all who opened the form;
  • those who opened but did not send;
  • those who opened and submitted the form.

4.3 Canvas (Facebook only)

What is a canvas and where can I create one?

Go to your Facebook business page and select "Share a photo or video" ( see screenshot ).

Select "Create Canvas" from the list that appears.

You can also create a canvas in Ads Manager or Power Editor. For those new to this format, it is recommended to use templates.

  • Choose canvas;
  • Include the audience that opened the canvas or clicked on any links in it;
  • Required time period - maximum 365 days;
  • You run ads on them again or create a lookalike audience.

4.4 Facebook Page (Facebook only)

This option is ideal for those types of businesses or people who do not have their own website/blog, but are present only on Facebook. Remarketing, as a tool, can return not only site visitors, but also people who visited a page on a social network. Data from these custom audiences is well suited for creating and targeting Lookalike Audiences.

First you need to select the page (if you have more than one) from which the collection will be carried out. By what parameters? For everyone!

  • Everyone who interacted with the page: were on the page and in some way interacted with it or with ads;
  • Any visitor: everyone who was on the page, even if he did not interact with it in any way;
  • Clicked a call to action, for example: learn more, call, write a message;
  • Only those who posted to the page;
  • Only those who saved the page or any publication (the most quiet ones who prefer not to give themselves away in any way, but save the materials they like).

The maximum period is 365 days.

Example:

A customized Facebook page audience has been created, and based on it, a similar one.

4.5 Instagram Business Profile (Instagram only)

I find that many entrepreneurs prefer to be active on only one social network. When business profiles appeared on Instagram, many preferred them because of the statistics. Because of this, many “blank” pages have appeared on Facebook, which are simply linked to Instagram, but no activity is being carried out.

The ability to collect an audience of people who visited an Instagram profile and/or interacted with it appeared relatively recently and is not yet available in all advertising accounts. One tip is to wait until the update reaches you.

A little more laziness: Facebook wants you to invest in ads. The more successful your campaign is, the more money you will be willing to give in order to get results. To do this, Facebook leaves hints everywhere. Arrows point to them in the screenshot above.

All of the above custom audiences can be used for remarketing on both Instagram and Facebook. And this is a very cool way to target Instagram ads to those who are most likely to follow you. Question: "Is it possible to target Instagram ads to your followers?" is one of the most common among people who decide on paid promotion methods on Instagram.

You can make exceptions when creating an audience. For example, you don't want to show ads to people who have DMed you in the last 60 days because most of them have become your customers, but you want to reach all the other people who visited your business profile and didn't place an order.

In the same way, you can target Facebook remarketing to those who most closely interacted with the Instagram business profile: wrote messages or saved any posts. Why exactly these parameters? It's simple: due to mass liking and mass following, the statistics of interactions with the profile and its visits can be violated. But automation services do not save posts to bookmarks and for the most part interested persons write to direct, so individualized audiences on these indicators will be the most targeted.

When an audience is created, the Availability column lights up red because the audience is not yet full. It takes a minimum of 20 people to make it green and allow you to continue working with the created audience.

Like this: 1100 Instagram profile visitors found. Now it is possible to run ads on them or create the most similar audience, much larger in size. So how do you create a Lookalike Audience? We return to the "Create an audience" section and select the item we need:

Then everything is very simple:

In the "Source" column , select any of the individually created audiences described above.

For example, you are an online store selling your products through Instagram. All questions about the purchase are resolved through Direct. This means that these people are not just interested in your product, they are solvent and some of them are already your customers.

In the column "Place" select the country in which we want to find a similar group. For example, Ukraine.

In the column "Audience size" select from 1% to 10% of the total population of the country. At the same time, 1% is the audience closest to the source.

IMPORTANT: Once a Lookalike Audience is created, its size cannot be changed, so it is recommended to create multiple audiences at once. To do this, open the advanced options and make the appropriate settings:

Example, 3 rooms at once;

  • 1% - an audience of about 100 thousand people will be gathered;
  • 3% - about 200 thousand more;
  • 6% - the total audience size is approximately 600,000 potentially interested users.

The higher the %, the more blurry the audience is.

Below is an example of audience scaling for a sportswear brand account:

Custom audience from point 4.5 (Engagement - Instagram) gathered 2400 people - account visitors.

Similar audience: Ukraine, 1% of the population. The predicted audience size was 99.9 thousand people, in fact it turned out to be 103.3 thousand. There is no point in expanding this audience yet.

IMPORTANT: to use an audience as a source for creating a lookalike, it must have at least 100 people from the same country. BUT, this source does not have to contain people from the country that we have chosen for targeting.

For example, our sports brand is a domestic manufacturer. Most of the buyers are from Ukraine. We want to select Belarus as a country for targeting. It will look like this:

The estimated coverage at 1% is a little more than 10 thousand people. Just in this case, it is advisable to increase the size of the audience:

The difference is obvious.

What actually happened? We collected an audience interested in the product in one country and created a similar audience in another.

How will they be similar? For sports topics, at least:

  • Gender - in Ukraine, mostly women buy;
  • Age is the most active segment of this brand: 25-34. This means that in Belarus the age indicator will not change the vector towards 50+. The audience will also be young.
  • Interests : it's more complicated here. Of course, “sports” can be the main one, but in addition to this, Facebook will analyze what other interests this group of people had in common. For example, they may be in love with rock music or cooking. In Belarus, these patterns will also be monitored.

The above are very general and rough indicators, Facebook analyzes many connections and patterns, on the basis of which it creates the coveted “Lookalike” audience. This is the work of algorithms based on artificial intelligence.

INTERESTING: by creating several similar audiences, you can see the degree of their intersection.

To do this, we tick off up to 5 audiences of interest to us, larger than 1000 people. In the example, 2 similar audiences were selected: one based on all interactions, the other - those who wrote in direct. Both audiences are about the same size.

Then select "Actions".

Show Audience Overlay:

Conclusion: ⅓ of these lookalike audiences overlap.

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