Facebook’s New Targeting Feature You May Have Missed
Facebook has been busy lately. Really busy — pushing out nearly a half dozen major ad units in the last 6 months (more on that here).
And while each of these releases typically involves lots of fanfare and push from account managers, we’ve stumbled upon something that has been quietly released but has major implications on Facebook audiences.
What is it?
An updated Lookalike Generation Flow. One that is more robust and finally enables audience types that power users have hacked together for years.
Step by step, here’s what’s new:
1) Create Multiple Lookalikes At Once
It is common to test out multiple Lookalike levels throughout your campaigns. You may start broad at 10% and then end up finding that 3% is the right size, for example. Before, generating each of these required a separate flow for each specific Lookalike level. Now, you can create up to six Lookalike levels at a time. For power users that iterate through multiple audiences and multiple levels, this alone could easily save hours each month.
2.) Create Tiered Lookalikes
Tiered (also called waterfall) Lookalikes are an audience type of trying a specific range within a Lookalike. For example, you may try a 2–4% range. This gives you a larger audience but also omits the 1% if you want to keep that separate or if it’s fatiguing.
Creating these segments like a 2–4% or a 5–10% has always been a manual hack that power advertisers have leaned on. They would create larger Lookalikes and then explicitly exclude smaller ones to make their desired range.
Facebook has finally recognized and supported this behavior. It’s now possible to “officially” create Lookalike ranges:
The Impact
On an individual level, this is a nice win for those executing on campaigns. It’s a low hype, high impact release from Facebook. It will save them time and unlock new audience segments to try.
In the marketplace, this move could increase competition for Lookalike audiences now that it’s easier to utilize them. Smart advertisers will anticipate this and keep a close eye on performance of Lookalike audiences while running low scale tests of other audience types to diversify and continue to look for the best targeting mix possible.
Finally, for Facebook — it’s a sign that they’re doubling down on Lookalike Audiences, a technology that is a massive advantage against their competitors and consistently yields incredible results for advertisers.
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