Facebook Ads: Go broad or go home

Facebook have made a huge change in ads manager as our 'go broad or go home' predictions are coming to life.

Detailed targeting expansion is now mandatory for conversion campaigns — this allows Facebook to target users outside your specified targeting criteria when it believes it can get better results.

Detailed targeting expansion has been around for some time now; we've been testing them across our clients and have seen some amazing results with uplifts in conversion volume and improvements in CPA and ROAS efficiencies.

Here's some of our tips;

Pros:

No longer missing out on potential results: our campaigns are opening up to audiences/users we may not have ever considered, allowing more opportunities for results and growth.

More results generally means more data to work with, stronger efficiencies and better overall performance for clients.

Cons:

With detailed targeting expansion applied, the potential reach/estimated audience size shown broadens to all possible users within your chosen location, age and gender parameters - this makes it difficult to determine the potential audience size of a combination of detailed targeting options.

Less visibility of audience sizes, less control over who we're targeting.

...BUT

The algorithm has changed immensely over recent years. Gone are the days of splitting out audiences at a granular level and manually optimising budget between them to get the best results. The algorithm is incredibly advanced and, the reality is, we'll never be smarter than the machine.

So, as marketers, we need to trust in the algorithm and use this change to our advantage.Our advice is to just go with it - don't look for a workaround!

Don't:

Choose an objective other than conversions - if conversions are what you want - will change who Facebook chooses to serve your ads to and they may not be the users who are most likely to convert as a result of seeing your ad. This could impact your results significantly.

Go mad with exclusions! Despite detailed targeting expansion becoming mandatory, exclusions will still apply. This isn't an excuse to try to exclude everyone BUT your desired audience. This essentially fights against how Facebook is designed to work and could limit your reach and your results (would also take a considerably amount of time to implement!)

Do:

Give it some time! With such advanced machine learning, the algorithm requires data. So try to make minimal changes after detailed targeting expansion is implemented, give the algorithm some time to learn before making any hasty changes.

Look to your ads if you see performance suffer: Facebook is fast becoming a creative-first advertising platform - your creative and copy is more important than ever, so provide a variety, don't be afraid to test and trial new approaches, and keep an open mind.