In this article, we will be discussing the audience controls section of the Ad Manager campaign creation flow that includes geographic location and Intended target audience selection. The audience control section remains same for both the pricing plans.
Lookalike and Retargeting audience options are coming soon for Default Ad Manager but available for Connect-Your-Own Meta Business Manager.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Where to find Audience Controls in Ad Manager campaign creation process?


The second step of campaign creation flow is about 'Budget and Audience' which has 2 parts:
  1. Budget - Refer https://help.gohighlevel.com/a/solutions/articles/155000003050?portalId=48000045315 for a detailed understanding on budget definition.
  2. Audience Controls- This will be the second section of the 'Budget and Audience' step comprising of:
    1. Geographic location: It is the first part of audience controls and contributes to estimating the audience size by defining the target audience location. 
    2. Intended Audience: This section deals with the target audience definition to be used for better ad performance and conversions by reaching out to the target audience.



How to include/exclude geographic location as part of the target audience group?


Under the first section of the Audience controls, there is an entry field box with label as 'Search Locations'. Follow the below steps to add/remove a location as part of your audience group:

1. Enter the city, town, state, country or specific address in the box and select the one you want from the list of results shown in the dropdown. The same location will be shown on the map next to it.


2. Once selected, the chosen location will be shown under the location box and using the dropdown next to it, you can select the radius range using the slider for audience consideration around the location.



3. Another dropdown in line with the selected location, next to the radius dropdown is to select between "Include" or "Exclude" an audience. If you select "Include", the audience in that location and radius(if defined) will be considered as target audience and if "Exclude" is selected, the audience of that vicinity will be ignored and not considered as the campaign audience and the location on the map will change the color to Red.



4. There is a cross icon present in line with the selected audience to remove the location if desired.


Note: The radius option of a location to narrow down target audience is present only for addresses, neighborhoods, alleyways and other similar locations. It will not be present for cities, countries and other vast locations.

What are the different types of Intended Audiences categories and how can one use them?

There are three types of Intended audiences available to be used which are described in brief as follows:


1. Target Interests: This one refers to new customers with specific interests, language, gender or Age range. Dropdown with interests of specific niche or industry can be selected for specific targeting of people who align with the one selected. Multiple Interests can be selected from the dropdown.



2. Lookalike audiences: This type of target audience refers to a new group of people who align in choices with your current customer base. A lookalike audience uses an existing custom audience you select as its source audience and when you use a lookalike audience, your ad is delivered to that audience of people who are similar to your existing customers which are used as the source for this lookalike group.


Note: Lookalike audiences support is limited or unavailable for Special Ad categories.




An estimated audience size is calculated based on the lookalike source and geographic location selected by you.



When user selects lookalike audience as their choice of intended audience, there will be a dropdown present under it and the dropdown items will be the list of lookalike audiences imported from the connected ad account.


3. Retargeting: This type of target audience refers to a group of people who are familiar with your brand/product and have interacted with it earlier at some point in any of the Meta platform. We use custom audience curated especially to target these set of people with our ad campaign with hopes of a conversion.



When the user selects Retargeting as the choice of intended audience, a dropdown will be present under it and the dropdown items will be the list of retargeting audiences created using custom audiences or imported from the connected ad account.



Please note: 
  1. Up to 15 lookalike and 15 retargeting audiences can be selected from the respective dropdown.
  2. The ready and not ready state of the audience in the dropdown refers to their eligibility to be used as an audience to draw enough traction for the ad campaign. If state is "Ready" audience can be selected and will give satisfactory results and if the status of any audience is "Not Ready" we do not allow that to be selected as designed by Facebook and the reason on why it cannot be selected will be shown as a tooltip next to it.
  3. Combination of all three or any two intended audiences can also be used for a campaign but it is not advised as it will narrow down the audience size considerably resulting in undesired turnaround.