The Only 2 Audiences I Use on Meta Ads...

Summary

In this video, the speaker discusses the evolution of Facebook ad targeting strategies, highlighting that in 2024, they primarily use only two audiences: Broad and Advantage Plus shopping. They explain that lookalike targeting has become ineffective, and interests targeting is losing steam. Broad targeting allows the algorithm to find the best fit for the business, while Advantage Plus combines explicit and implicit user intent for scalability. The speaker also touches on the importance of creative strategy over targeting and introduces catalog ads as a potential third audience type, emphasizing their effectiveness in e-commerce.

Takeaways

• 🔍 In 2024, the speaker primarily uses two Facebook ad audiences: Broad and Advantage Plus shopping, abandoning Lookalike targeting.
• 📉 Lookalike targeting has become ineffective, and interest targeting is losing steam, often used as a temporary fix for poor performance.
• 🎯 Broad targeting is recommended for scalability and simplicity, allowing the algorithm to identify the best fit for the business.
• 🛒 Advantage Plus shopping combines explicit and implicit intent, starting with retargeting audiences to train the algorithm for broader targeting.
• 📈 The speaker analyzed 10 brands and found a decline in the use of retargeting and interest targeting, with an increase in ASC campaigns.
• 💡 Brands should focus on creative testing rather than relying on audience targeting to improve ad performance.
• 📊 The data shows that broad targeting outperforms interest targeting in most cases, even when brands initially test other methods.
• 🔄 If Broad and Advantage Plus aren't effective, the speaker suggests a setup combining stacked interest groups, lookalikes, and Broad with top-performing creatives.
• 🎨 The speaker emphasizes that poor ad performance is often due to creative issues rather than targeting issues.
• 📦 Catalog ads, specifically dynamic product ads (DPAs), are considered a separate targeting strategy due to their unique delivery structure within Meta's ad system.

Q & A

What are the two primary audiences the speaker is using for Facebook ads in 2024?

The two primary audiences the speaker is using for Facebook ads in 2024 are Broad and Advantage Plus shopping.

Why does the speaker believe that lookalike targeting is no longer effective?

The speaker believes that lookalike targeting is no longer effective because their analysis across 10 brands showed that it is 'dead in the water' and that interests have been losing steam.

What is the difference between Broad and Advantage Plus shopping audiences?

Broad audiences are open targeting with no lookalikes, custom audiences, or interest targeting, possibly with some guardrails on age, location, and gender. Advantage Plus shopping, on the other hand, includes both explicit intent (retargeting audiences) and implicit intent (people in the market for similar products but haven't discovered the brand yet).

Why is the speaker advocating for the use of broader audiences?

The speaker advocates for broader audiences because they believe it trains the algorithm to look at everyone and zone in on the people who are the best fit for the business, and it's the most scalable audience.

What does the speaker suggest when Broad and Advantage Plus audiences are not working?

When Broad and Advantage Plus audiences are not working, the speaker suggests testing the right types of creatives and having a strong creative strategy. If that doesn't work, they recommend a setup that includes a stacked interest group, a stacked lookalike, and Broad.

What is the role of creatives in the success of Facebook ads according to the speaker?

According to the speaker, creatives play a crucial role in the success of Facebook ads. They suggest that often it's not a targeting issue, but rather a creative issue that needs to be addressed.

What is the third audience the speaker mentions and why do they consider it different?

The third audience the speaker mentions is catalog ads or dynamic product ads (DPAs). They consider it different because it is a different delivery structure inside of Meta ads, where the algorithm reads skew level data to deliver the ads to the right people.

Why is the speaker concerned about brands not using catalog ads?

The speaker is concerned because if brands avoid catalog ads, Meta could deliver that content to their competitors, and they believe it's better to be on the receiving end of that competitive pack.

What does the speaker suggest brands should do if they are struggling with ad performance?

If brands are struggling with ad performance, the speaker suggests doing more creative testing and possibly using a setup that includes a stacked interest group, a stacked lookalike, and Broad with their current top-performing creative.

What additional advice does the speaker give for improving ad performance?

The speaker advises checking out their other videos on creating great creatives that convert and testing all major ad formats.

Outlines

00:00

🚀 Shift in Facebook Ad Targeting Strategies

The speaker discusses a significant change in their Facebook ad targeting strategies, moving from four to just two audiences in 2024. They conducted an analysis across 10 brands and found that Audience Selection Criteria (ASC) and lookalike targeting are no longer effective. The two audiences they now focus on are 'Broad' and 'Advantage Plus shopping'. Broad targeting involves open targeting without lookalikes or interest targeting, while Advantage Plus shopping targets both explicit and implicit intent audiences, using retargeting to train the algorithm for scalability. The speaker emphasizes the importance of broader audiences for algorithm training and scalability, suggesting that interest targeting is often a temporary fix for poor performance.

05:00

📊 Analysis of Brand Ad Performance and Creative Strategy

The speaker provides an in-depth analysis of ad performance across different brands, noting a decline in the use of interest and lookalike targeting. They highlight that most brands are now using ASC, and some are employing multiple ASC campaigns for various offers or categories. For brands struggling with Broad and ASC targeting, the speaker recommends testing different types of creatives and a strong creative strategy. They also suggest a fallback strategy of using a stacked interest group and lookalike in addition to Broad if the primary methods fail. The speaker stresses that creative issues are often the root cause of poor ad performance rather than targeting issues. Lastly, they touch on dynamic product ads (DPAs) as a potential third audience, explaining how they work and their importance in the competitive e-commerce landscape.

Keywords

💡Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads are a form of online advertising that allows businesses to promote their products or services on Facebook. In the video, the speaker discusses how they have refined their approach to using Facebook Ads, focusing on two specific audience types. This is central to the video's theme of optimizing ad performance.

💡Audiences

In the context of the video, 'audiences' refers to the different groups of potential customers that a business can target with their Facebook Ads. The speaker mentions that they have moved from using four to just two types of audiences, indicating a shift in strategy.

💡ASC (Automatic Special Custom Audiences)

Automatic Special Custom Audiences are a type of audience targeting on Facebook that combines explicit and implicit user intent to serve ads. The video suggests that ASC has become a primary method for the speaker, replacing lookalike targeting.

💡Lookalike Targeting

Lookalike targeting is an advertising technique where ads are shown to people similar to a business's existing customer base. The speaker notes that lookalike targeting is 'dead in the water,' indicating it's no longer effective for their strategy.

💡Interest Targeting

Interest targeting involves showing ads to people based on their interests as indicated by their online behavior. The video mentions that interest targeting is losing steam and may be a temporary solution for brands with poor performance.

💡Broad Targeting

Broad targeting is an approach where ads are shown to a wide, open audience without specific targeting criteria. The speaker advocates for broader audiences, arguing that it trains the algorithm to find the best fit for a business.

💡Advantage Plus Shopping

Advantage Plus Shopping seems to be a term used by the speaker to describe a complex form of targeting that includes both explicit and implicit intent. It starts with retargeting audiences and then expands to find similar audiences, which is considered scalable.

💡Explicit Intent

Explicit intent refers to users who have shown a clear interest in a brand or product, such as by visiting a website or engaging on social media. The video suggests that these users are part of the ASC audience targeting strategy.

💡Implicit Intent

Implicit intent involves users who may be in the market for a product or service but haven't yet discovered a particular brand. The speaker uses the example of someone looking at mattresses and then seeing ads for other mattress brands on Facebook.

💡Creatives

In the context of advertising, 'creatives' refers to the visual and textual content of an ad. The speaker suggests that investing in high-quality creatives is more effective than relying on interest or lookalike targeting for ad performance.

💡Catalog Ads

Catalog Ads, also known as Dynamic Product Ads (DPAs), are a type of advertising that uses a product catalog to serve personalized ads to users. The speaker considers these a different type of audience targeting and notes that they are becoming increasingly important in e-commerce.

Highlights

In 2024, the speaker uses only two audiences for Facebook ads instead of four from the previous year.

Lookalike targeting is considered ineffective, and interest targeting is losing steam.

The two audiences currently used are Broad and Advantage Plus shopping.

Broad targeting is open targeting without lookalikes, custom audiences, or interest targeting.

Advantage Plus shopping includes both explicit and implicit intent audiences.

Explicit intent refers to retargeting audiences with a known interest in the brand or product.

Implicit intent targets people who are potentially in the market but haven't discovered the brand yet.

Advantage Plus starts as a retargeting audience to train the algorithm for broader targeting.

The speaker provides a chart analysis of 10 brands' Facebook ad accounts.

Very few brands are using local EGS, and interest targeting is on the decline.

Brand number three's interest targeting did not perform well compared to broad targeting.

Brand number five found broad targeting more effective than interest or lookalikes.

Brand number seven was one of the few where interest targeting outperformed broad targeting.

Many brands are using multiple ASC campaigns for different purposes.

If Broad and Advantage Plus aren't working, the speaker recommends testing with a stacked interest group and lookalike in Broad.

The speaker suggests that poor performance is often due to creative issues rather than targeting issues.

Catalog ads, or dynamic product ads (DPAs), are considered a different type of audience targeting.

Catalog ads use product data to deliver ads, even showing competitors' products if out of stock.

The speaker will discuss catalog ads in more detail in an upcoming interview.

Transcripts

what's up marketers last year I released

this video that talked about the only

four audiences that I use on my Facebook

ads and now in 2024 I am only using two

audiences I even did a quick analysis

across 10 brands Facebook ad accounts

and as you can see pretty much everyone

is using ASC and lookalike targeting is

dead in the water so today we are going

to talk about the only two audiences I'm

using right now on Facebook ads we're

also going to dive way more into this

chart and I'm also going to be giving

you some tips if these two audiences

don't seem to be working out for you and

I'm also going to talk about the other

campaign that no one talks about and I

actually consider this to be a different

type of targeting so maybe I actually

use three but more on that later okay so

let's dive into it these are the only

two audiences I'm using for targeting

right now on my Facebook ads and I'm

going to keep this super simple Broad

and Advantage Plus shopping what I found

over the last year is look likes are

completely dead and interests have been

losing a ton of steam but

sometimes they can work temporarily I

generally find when a brand is doing a

lot of interest targeting it's a

Band-Aid for poor performance and they

should probably just be investing all of

that energy and effort into making

creatives now let's take a look at Broad

and Advantage Plus shopping these are

different audiences let me explain so

broad is simple right this is completely

open targeting no lookalikes no custom

audiences no interest targeting maybe

we'll have some guard rails on age

location and gender if applicable but

for the most part broader here is better

and I always get some people that are a

little scared to test broad audiences

because oh what if the algorithm doesn't

know trust me the algorithm knows it's

using your creative to Target and hit

the right people but it's really

important that you start using broader

audiences because you're training the

algorithm to look at everyone and Zone

in on the people who are going to be the

best fit for your business also it's the

most scalable audience now advanage

Quest shopping is a little bit more

complicated and something that Facebook

has actually said is that asc's actually

work on a spectrum of intent so this is

going to include explicit intent and

implicit intent so what is explicit

intent so these are your retargeting

audiences right these are people who

have an explicit interest in you in your

brand and your product so maybe they've

been to your website they've added to

card or they've engaged with you on

social media now an implicit intent is

people who are a little bit more up

funnel so they're people potentially who

are in market for your product or

service but they haven't actually

discovered you yet so a really simple

way to think about this is maybe you're

in the market for a and you go to Casper

to look at their mattresses but then

when you visit Facebook or Instagram the

next time you see oh all these other

mattress companies are hitting me up

that's because you have an implicit

interest in their brand or business

because they are looking at the products

that are being sold against your

competitors and then putting you in the

line of fire for a different option

essentially now what I think is really

cool about that Advantage Plus is

essentially it starts off as a

retargeting audience that essentially

trains the algorithm to then look for

other people who look like the people

that have that explicit interest it's

kind of like having a retargeting

campaign teach your algorithm and since

it's targeting everyone it's infinitely

scalable which is very good for you now

if you want to learn more about

Advantage plush shopping I have an

entire video right here that is going to

do a deep dive on everything you need to

know about how to actually set up that

campaign alongside your campaigns that

you're currently running so Broad and

Advantage Plus those are the only two

targeting audiences that I use on my

Facebook ads and you know the third but

more on that in a bit and if you're

enjoying this video please be sure to

give me a like And subscribe those small

actions really do help me out as a

Creator no I'll wait you can do it now

okay now let's take a look at this chart

right we have 10 different brands

several different Industries these are

the monthly budgets that they've been

using over the last 30 days number of

live current campaigns if they're using

retargeting if they're using ASC if

they're using interest and if they're

using lookalikes so big thing right here

is anyone one using local EGS no and not

many people are using interest targeting

either retargeting is also massively on

the decline because everyone's using ASC

and the idea there is that they are

getting those retargeting audiences in

those ASC campaigns so let's take a look

at some of these individual Brands right

let's look at Brand number three at

first this is one of the only ones that

was doing a lot of interest targeting

and to be honest it wasn't really doing

that well for them they were getting a

lot better performance coming at abroad

however I think the reason why they're

doing it is they weren't necessarily

reaching their goal across the board

this brand should be doing more creative

testing but right now they're trying to

mitigate performance by quickly testing

out different audiences and it's not

really working and let's look at Brand

number five spending 20K over the last

30 days in the HomeGoods industry and

what's interesting here is I had them

marked down for no for both interest and

look likes but it is actually something

that they've tested over the last 60

days but turned off due to poor

performance and they actually did the

exact structure that I recommend when

Brands need to test out interest or a

little bit of lookalike targeting but

broad ended up being the most effective

for them which is something that I see a

lot now let's take a look at Brand

number seven now this is one of the only

Brands where their interest targeting

was performing better than Broad and

they had tested lookalikes recently but

it was a huge block for Brand number

eight in skincare I said that they

weren't doing any R targeting but they

did have a loyalty Campaign which means

that they were targeting current and

past customers sometimes people lump

this into retargeting but I do consider

it more of a loyalty campaign since

you've already acquired those customers

before in the past and something that I

wanted to note across a lot of these

Brands to is that many of them are

actually starting to use multiple ASC

campaigns and this is something that I

see more and more brands are starting to

do so they'll have an ASC campaign with

their top performing creatives but then

maybe they'll also have an ASC campaign

for a special offer that's temporary

Black Friday cyber money is a great

example or if they want to test out

something specific for a specific

category now one of the number one

questions I get is okay D Advantage Plus

shopping and Broad aren't working for me

what do I do the first thing I always

check out is if they're testing the

right types of creat Crees and they have

a strong creative strategy generally

it's no and I see a lot of people

getting into the Trap of thinking that

interest targeting and lookalike

targeting are going to help them when it

seldom does and it's often times the

creative and product strategy and offer

strategy that really helps Drive things

forward however I'm still of the mindset

that everything should be tested and if

Broad and ASC aren't working for you

then I would generally recommend this

setup so this is the old scaling

prospecting setup of mine I still use it

if I see a brand is really struggling

and we might need to try and get an easy

quick win and we have some new creatives

coming down the pipeline but they're not

quite ready yet so I will do a stacked

interest group a stacked lookalike in

Broad but again nine times out of 10

recently it's still the broad that's

working here maybe we'll get a little

bit of traction out of the interest ad

set for a little bit but it generally

doesn't last as long and I would launch

this with your current top performing

creative to date and again if you do

this and you still don't find that the

results are there it's probably a

creative issue I'm generally always

willing to bet that it's never a

targeting issue but it's better to be

proven wrong on that my suggestion here

if you're stuck with the creatives I

have tons of amazing videos on great

creatives that you can make literally

today literally for free that nearly

always convert be sure to check those

out and also make sure that you've

tested all major formats okay now let's

talk about the potential third audience

and you're going to understand why I

categorize this as a different audience

these are catalog ads are the DPA the

dynamic product ads catalog ads are a

huge category in fact meta actually

released a statistic recently that

showed that 7 % of all retail and

e-commerce went to DPA some of the

biggest retailers in the world primarily

use this like Champion revolve pains now

the reason why I consider this a

different audience is because it is a

different delivery structure inside of

meta ads in fact the algorithm actually

reads your skew level data to help

deliver the ads to the right people

they're looking at everything from the

product the price range the color the

sizes even the fabric so say you're

selling a black leather shoe and in the

$7 to $80 range but size 10 is sold out

if someone is looking for that size 10

shoe meta will actually look through the

catalog of different competitors and

show them similar shoes so I consider

this to be a huge competitive pack and I

know what you're thinking if I avoid

doing catalog ads is meta than going to

deliver that stuff to my competitors

still yes so you might as well be on the

receiving end of that I've recently

learned a lot about catalog ads from my

friend Dan at marpipe he's really doing

amazing things and we have a huge

interview coming out soon all about the

most boring ad in the world so be sure

to stay tuned for that and that's it I

will see you guys next week if you got

all the way to the end of this video let

me know what your favorite audience is

in the comments see you bye