The Approach to Targeting Has Changed

Things have changed…

Advertisers love asking about how they can target their ideal audience. Should they use interests and behaviors? Which ones?

Are lookalike audiences better? Should you use lookalikes based on your paying customers, email list, website visitors, or something else?

How about custom audiences? Should we limit by age and gender?

You’re Overthinking It

These are the questions we were all asking a few years ago. We asked those questions because they mattered. But, advertisers who ask these questions now are falling behind.

We think that our targeting inputs will be the reason for the success or failure of our ads. The reason we think that is because this was absolutely the case at one time.

But when you overthink these things now, you’re more likely to make your results worse. You restrict your audience and drive up costs. You create multiple ad sets to test different targeting and drive up costs.

I’m not saying that your targeting inputs never have any impact on results. But, they have far less impact than they once did. And in many situations, doing nothing is better than doing something.

How to Impact Who Sees Your Ads

Forget about targeting. You can still impact who sees your ads, but it doesn’t need to be with targeting inputs.

Your performance goal is much more important. It helps the algorithm find people who are likely to perform the action that you want.

Your ad copy, creative, and offer impact the people you’ll reach, too. What you do here will attract the right audience, attract a general audience, or repel everyone.