How Does Targeting on Facebook & Instagram Ads Work?

Have you ever considered purchasing a graphic tee sporting a dad joke confidently printed in Comic Sans for Father’s Day, only to see ads for that shirt (and a carousel of similar shirts) in your Facebook and Instagram feed for what feels like the next six months?

This isn’t like when you purchase a red Jeep Wrangler—and then see red Jeep Wranglers everywhere.

You’ve been retargeted.

Six months later, you’re still seeing ads. That ever-loving Comic Sans t-shirt is still top of mind, and more and more, it does seem like the type of gift your dad would joke about with his friends for years to come. Next thing you know, you’ve pressed “Add to Cart,” and the same goofy shirt you searched for six months ago is expected to arrive in 3–5 business days.

How did this happen?

Let’s peel back the curtain on Meta ads to see why and how this brand made its way from your search history to your Instagram feed and now your home—and the lead generation benefits Meta’s diverse targeting offering can provide for your business.

What Are Meta Ads?

Meta ads, formerly known as Facebook Ads, are an online advertising medium that allows businesses to create customized ads for specific audiences on Facebook and Instagram. There are even conversion actions set to encourage personal conversations with prospective customers on Meta’s Messenger and WhatsApp.

Meta is beloved by marketers worldwide for their vast targeting options. Their tagline reads: “Your customers are here. Find them with Meta ads.”

Not a bad slogan, considering it’s true.

As of January 2024, 68% of US adults used Facebook and 47% used Instagram.

So, out of Meta’s 3 billion (and counting) users, how do you ensure your ad spend is reaching and converting your target audience to loyal brand advocates?

Here are three targeting categories to help find your people on this mammoth of an advertising platform.

1. Advantage+ Targeting
2. Prospecting
3. Retargeting

1. Advantage+ Targeting: The Algorithm Knows Best

Meta claims Advantage+ “can be the easiest to use and best-performing Advantage audience automation option yet.”

Advantage+ targeting is an automation tool from Meta that frees advertisers of the need to define their target audience. This targeting option uses AI and performance data to find brands’ target audiences for them, using machine learning from Pixel data, conversion history, and ad engagement.

When tested by Meta against other audience options, Advantage+ audience has typically improved performance on campaigns using all objectives.

Meta reported:

• 13% lower median cost per product catalog sale.
• 7% lower median cost per website conversion.
• 28% lower average cost per click, lead, or landing page view.

Convincing. We’ve seen this hold true for eCommerce clients and other businesses with a long history of Meta ads use. However, businesses running Meta ads for the first time lack previous ad interactions and Pixel data (which we will discuss more later in this article), necessitating the need to manually set targeting options.

2. Prospecting: Reaching New Audiences

After speaking with countless business owners, and being one himself, our founder Brandon West observed, “We live in a culture bankrupt of trust, where people start from distrust.”

Building awareness is the crucial first step in building trust with today’s consumers.

There are a few different ways we can “manually” attract new traffic with Facebook and Instagram ads.

Detailed Targeting

From a digital advertising perspective, there are two main ways someone can make initial contact with your brand:

1. They search “gifts ideas for dad’s birthday” and find your brand in a Google ad, or scroll past the ads and find your brand in the first three organic search results.
2. Or, they just have a dad, and Facebook knows his birthday is coming up because he put his date of birth in his profile the last time he used Facebook in 2006—wild.

The latter is an example of interest-based targeting.

Meta advertisers have the option to target “friends of men with a birthday in 7–30 days.” This interest currently has a massive audience size of 1,633,004,255–1,920,413,004 people. The advertiser can then choose to expand this audience to all users with an interest, as determined by Meta, in “jokes and funny pictures” or narrow down the audience to only reach friends of men with a birthday in 7–30 days whose user behavior has demonstrated they also have an interest in jokes and funny pictures.

Being identified as having these interests is one reason you may have been targeted with funny graphic tee ads.

The demographics, interests, and behavior-based targeting combinations available to Meta advertisers are virtually endless.

Lookalike Audiences

Meta states “a lookalike audience is a way your ads can reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they share similar characteristics with your existing customers.”

Meta Ads allows you to create lookalike audiences based on data from customers who already love your brand. This could include recurring customer lists, newsletter subscribers, or a CSV file with contact information from people who have submitted a form on your website.

Maybe you’re a home service business owner, and you’ve been in your industry for 25 years—you likely know exactly what kind of customers benefit from your product. That’s super helpful!

The more data you have, the better. Meta generally recommends a source audience of 1,000–5,000 people. You can use multiple lookalike audiences in a single ad set to expand your reach, targeting people who fall under any of your selected lookalike audiences.

Yes, your search history could have triggered the retargeting, but maybe you were placed in a lookalike audience for Funny Graphic Tee Company’s current customers. You get the gist.

Because people in your source audience are excluded from your lookalike audience, this Meta targeting option helps reach new audiences and scale your business.

3. Retargeting: Encourage Customer Loyalty

Your best customers may already be yours.

Here are some of the ways Meta allows advertisers to retarget people who have shown demonstrated interest in their brand.

Retarget Site Visitors

All Website Traffic

Meta gives advertisers the option to retarget the last 180 days, or six months, of all site visitors that are able to be matched with a Facebook or Instagram account.

This requires installing a Pixel on your site. Facebook defines the Meta Pixel as “a piece of code on your website that can help you better understand the effectiveness of your advertising and the actions people take on your site, like visiting a page or adding an item to their cart.”

Depending on your site’s CMS, Pixel setup may require the help of a developer and/or Meta technical pro.

Specific Site Pages

Maybe your site has enough monthly traffic to get specific, and you have multiple pages bringing in 1,000 sessions per month each. Congrats! This is a serious SEO feat with tremendous retargeting potential.

If not, let’s create an SEO strategy with site content worth retargeting!

Similar to retargeting all website traffic, Meta gives advertisers the option to retarget people based on whether or not they’ve visited a specific URL in the last 180 days. Want more residential roofing leads? Try targeting people who have visited your residential roofing service page and excluding all current customers.

Retarget Current Customers

The same way you can upload a customer list to create a lookalike audience, you can directly retarget customers.

One-Time Customers

Let Facebook and Instagram’s algorithms upsell for you. Upload a list of one-time customers and retarget them with ads highlighting the unique benefits of your annual plan.

Past Shoppers

Running a 25% off sale for your summer pest control program? The same people who found peace of mind from your pest control summer sale last year probably want to hear how they can save and stay pest-free this summer too.

This Meta targeting option requires detailed conversion tracking. Upload a CSV of last year’s summer pest control program conversions and retarget from there. Again, you’re looking for an audience with 1,000 people or more for the best results.

Create a Leads Funnel with PHOS Creative

When it comes to investing in Instagram and Facebook ads, don’t guess who your ads are reaching.

When you partner with PHOS Creative for your lead generation, an experienced Digital Campaign Specialist and Search Engine Specialist are assigned to learn all there is to know about your product offering, mission, and organizational goals. The beauty of this relationship is that this team can increase your web traffic—via Google ads and SEO—and retarget these future customers on Facebook and Instagram, creating an evergreen lead generation funnel.

The first step towards building trust with the public is simply to be a company worthy of its trust. Got that part covered? Our team can help you find your people.