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Test Age and Gender Targeting Restrictions

fromermedia@gmail.com
fromermedia@gmail.comAugust 30, 202462 comments
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Do you restrict your audience by age or gender? You might do this based on the demographics of your typical customer.

If you use Advantage+ Audience, gender and age maximums are only suggestions. When using original audiences, age and gender are tight constraints.

It makes sense to think you need the tight constraints, but I encourage you to do this…

Set Up

Create a sales campaign. If you optimize for top-of-the-funnel actions like link clicks, ThruPlay or engagement, the restrictions may be necessary.

Sales Campaign

Within that campaign, create two ad sets:

  1. Original audiences and restricting by age and gender
  2. Advantage+ Audience without those restrictions

The Test

Then create an A/B test. Select both of those ad sets to compare.

A/B Test

You’ll want to generate enough volume from this test to get meaningful results. That’s done with your budget and how long it’s run. A/B tests can run for up to a month. Do not let Meta pick a winner before the test ends.

A/B Test

Set your key metric for determining the winner to Cost Per Purchase.

A/B Test

What to Look For

When optimizing for purchases, the algorithm usually doesn’t need you to restrict by age or gender. It should figure it out. I’ve actually seen this in action for companies that serve primarily women.

Advantage+ Shopping Gender Distribution

If you ever run into problems with Advantage+ Audience not restricting by age or gender, it’s usually when optimizing for actions at the top of the funnel. Leads can potentially be an issue, too. But purchases should not be.

Maybe this test will validate your approach. Maybe not. But you should test your assumptions at least once per year.

For more on testing targeting strategies, check out my blog post.



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