Facebook have recently announced that they're making targeting expansion on all
new conversion campaigns mandatory.
And that's led to a lot of questions about what it means for advertising.
There's a lot of confusion as well. And of course,
a little speculation with people even saying things like, well,
targeting is dead. Now you might as well just let the AI do everything for you.
So in this video, we're going to look into all of that.
We're going to look at what audience expansion actually is, how it works,
what this change means for advertisers and how I think we should be setting up
our campaigns from this point forward in order to get the best possible results.
Right. So let's dive in before we do, if you enjoy this video,
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Right? So first of all, let's look at the reason for the change.
So why is Facebook actually doing this? Well,
I got an email from Facebook explaining this a little,
and here's what they said. We are making this update.
As our testing has demonstrated the following conversion campaigns using
detailed targeting expansions or an average 37% decrease in cost
per conversion,
compared to using detailed targeting only conversion campaigns using lookalike
expansion with a website or mobile app custom conversion as the basis for
the lookalike Saw a 17.3% decrease in median CPA
compared to using lookalike targeting only and conversion campaigns using a
customer list custom audience as the seed for the lookalike saw a
10.1% decrease in CPA compared to just using lookalike targeting only.
So, I mean, based on that, it makes sense, right?
But let's keep digging a little bit.
So here's what targeting expansion actually does.
There are actually two different options when it comes to targeting expansion.
The first one is detailed targeting expansion.
And basically what that does is it allows Facebook to target audiences outside
of these selected demographics, interests, or behaviors that you choose.
The second one is lookalike expansion and that's a different option.
And that basically allows Facebook to target audiences outside of the lookalike
audiences that you're targeting. And Facebook tells us that it works like this.
If you enable targeting expansion,
either of those two options that I mentioned above Facebook will show your ads
to people outside of your target audience.
If it thinks that that will improve performance.
And what they say is that they use the demographics,
interests and behaviors that you select in the detailed targeting section
as a guide for delivery while also assessing performance.
And then basically if the system finds better opportunities for performance
outside of your target audience,
then they will take the Liberty to go and show more of your ads to people
outside of that audience, with your best interests at heart.
Meaning if they think it's going to get you better results by targeting people
outside of your target audience, then that's what the system is going to do.
And the same applies for lookalike audience expansion as well. Basically,
it's the exact same option for a lookalike.
It's going to look at your lookalike audience and if it sees a better
opportunities or what it sees as a better opportunity outside of that,
it will start shifting your budget to audiences outside.
Now it's important to note here what it's not going to do.
So it's not going to for a star target demographics outside of those,
you select in terms of age, gender, and location, and things like that.
This is only talking about those options that you choose in that detailed
targeting box at the ad set level.
It's also still not going to target anybody in your exclusions list.
So if you're excluding particular audiences,
the detailed targeting expansion option or the lookalike expansion option
doesn't mean it's going to target people that you're excluding specifically.
And it's also important to mention that if you are targeting custom audiences,
meaning not lookalikes or interests, but just custom audiences,
maybe based on website visitors or an uploaded email list,
then it's not going to go outside of that.
It will stay within the bounds of your specific custom audiences.
So if you take all of this information and remember Facebook,
aren't super transparent with this, they give us limited information.
So I'm taking what we know from what Facebook is telling us and what I've seen
based on our results. And this is how I kind of see this working.
You enter the lookalike or the interests that you want to target.
Facebook starts off by showing the majority of your ads to your selected target
audience.
Let's say 90% goes to your specific target audience that you've chosen.
Meanwhile, 10% goes to people outside of that audience.
So Facebook is kind of testing audiences that are outside of the one that you
chose while this is happening. Facebook is gathering data.
It's having a look at the performance of each.
And if Facebook then determines that, Hey,
there are opportunities outside of the audiences that this person has chosen,
that where I think I can get better results.
Then it's going to start to allocate more of your budget to those audiences
outside the target.
And I would assume that if it doesn't see those opportunities,
then it's going to stick to your specific target audience.
And if that's the case, I don't see it as a huge problem.
That sounds pretty good. Right?
Facebook is going to use a little bit of budget to test what's outside.
If it can get you better performance, it's going to do that.
Otherwise it's going to stick to your target audience, but here's the kicker.
We don't actually know how much of our budget is being spent,
targeting the audience that we chose versus targeting audiences outside of that,
that Facebook's AI has determined. Somehow.
We also don't have any way to see how many of our leads or conversions are
coming from the audience that we chose versus the expanded audience that the AI
chose. So it's a black box and we're never going to know,
is this actually helping or hurting our performance,
particularly when this is mandatory and we can't run a side-by-side test with
audience expansion on versus one with audiences in spreadsheets off.
So we're literally at the mercy of Facebook and we just have to trust that this
feature is actually getting us better results than it would otherwise.
The other thing that concerns me with this is that we know that since iOS 14.5
rolled out and with it came,
those privacy changes that really prevented Facebook from tracking a lot of its
users.
What that means is the AI now gets far fewer data points on a lot of its users,
then it previously used to collect.
And that means that the AI is not going to be able to do as good a job as it
used to in terms of targeting.
So knowing that it makes me a little nervous that we're moving more towards a
system where we're relying on the AI we're in at the same time,
we know that that AI is actually getting less data in order to make those
decisions than it used to. Right? So all of that said,
how should you approach your targeting now? Is this really a case of, well,
Facebook is taking over targeting. There's no point doing any of it anymore.
I'm just going to go hands-off and let them do their thing,
or should you handle it a little differently? Well,
here's how I think you should do it.
Given that Facebook still uses the audiences that you select,
meaning the interests or the lookalike as a basis for its targeting,
when it first gets started,
then I definitely think you should still be doing that. Now.
I've been using the audience expansion options for a while now,
and I use them on quite a few of our campaigns and ad sets.
And what I can tell you from that is when using audience expansion,
it is still very, very much worthwhile testing,
different interests against each other,
even when you've got that audience expansion on and the same applies to
lookalikes.
So knowing that I can tell you for sure that it's still going to be worthwhile
setting up different ad sets with different audiences and testing them against
each other, even though audience expansion is going to be on,
you will still see some outperform others by quite a long way.
And it is still a good way to optimize.
We're definitely not at a point where you can just select rough target
interests,
have one ad set with audience expansion on and just rely on the AI to do the
rest. It is still absolutely worth testing,
lots of different audiences and seeing which ones outperform others and the same
applies to lookalikes,
continue to test different lookalikes against your interests and different
lookalikes against each other. Even though audience expansion is on,
it is still a very worthwhile thing to do. Now,
maybe one day the AI is going to get to a point where it will rely on pixel data
and conversion data in order to optimize.
And you won't need to select anything in your targeting,
but we certainly aren't there yet. Speaking of AI, if you enjoy this video,
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You'll get notified whenever I release a new video. Now,
if you're new to Facebook ads and you just want to jump in and get started the
right way, here's a quick video that I made that walk you through.
Start to finish how to set up a successful Facebook ad campaign and avoid a lot
of the common mistakes that new advertisers make.
So make sure you check that out now. Thanks again for watching.
I appreciate your time and I'll see you in the next video. Bye.