Whether you’re new to Facebook ads or you’re well versed in how to run a campaign, you’ve probably encountered detailed targeting. It sounds great in theory—but in practice, this so-called best practice might actually be negating your efforts. How can that be—and what should you do instead?

Detailed targeting is a feature of Facebook ads enabling you to pinpoint who your ads get shown to. It’s considered by many advertisers as a go-so strategy to boost their Facebook ads—but at our own performance marketing agency we’ve found no fewer than 7 primary issues with the practice:

• Performance is volatile
• Ads perform worse over time
• Detailed targeting costs more than other types of targeting
• It’s harder to scale (that is, to spend more) on ads that use detailed targeting
• The audience you curate could be removed anytime—and without warning
• Many users in your detailed targeting audience might actually not belong there
• You’re actually preventing the Facebook ads algorithm from performing optimally

Oftentimes, to use detailed targeting is to invest in a depreciating asset. In other words, you’re putting time and money into something that can only decline in value over time. Naturally there are times when it is useful—but you might just be surprised how often that’s not the case. That’s why today we’re exploring an alternative strategy for specifying your audience—with precisely zero detailed targeting.

How does detailed targeting work?

Facebook is an unbelievably powerful tool for getting your product or service out there. So it’s baffling that the platform itself offers a feature so prone to suboptimal performance. And because it’s a recommended function, lots of marketers naturally don’t question it, and many don’t realise that Facebook ads create their own audiences, based on the ads’ content.

The moment you publish an ad, the Facebook ads algorithm analyses its constituents:

• the words
• its overall style
• the content of the imagery: the landscape, the object, the demographics of any persons depicted

…And that’s barely scratching the surface of the data points considered. What’s more, the algorithm also looks at the landing page that the ad directs to.

With all this data collected and analysed, the algorithm starts building an audience of users whom it deems the ad is most likely to resonate with. It then identifies what characteristics are shared by those users who actually do engage with the ad—and what those who don’t engage with it have in common, too. The algorithm then filters and adjusts the audience accordingly, continually tweaking as it learns.

When is detailed targeting useful?

Of course there’s no absolute rule when it comes to any aspect of digital marketing, and detailed targeting is no exception. Detailed targeting is handy in some situations when you’re looking to filter your audience by:

• interests
• behaviours
• demographics

…Or when you want to refine your targeting even further, using the Narrow audience function after having added your initial choices.

Detailed targeting also has some utility when you’re looking to exclude certain characteristics from your audience—such as interests, behaviours or demographics—or indeed include some traits and exclude others at the same time.

When is detailed targeting not worth the effort?

You should probably avoid detailed marketing if you’re working with a custom audience, as introducing it to an ad set in this scenario means using an and function. In other words you’re telling the algorithm that you want any given user targeted to be both in your custom audience and to match your chosen interest, behaviour or demographic—whereas usually it’s enough for the user to be in your custom audience or matching that interest, behaviour or demographic.

Detailed targeting is also best avoided if you’re targeting website visitors or people on your email list. Unless you’re an unusually large company, those audiences are probably already relatively small, perhaps a few thousand strong at most. Introducing detailed targeting to that already narrow subset of users crushes the size of that audience down into a vanishingly small number—and for vanishingly small gains. All things being equal, the larger the audience the better.

A new kind of targeting—no detailed targeting required

You can see the surprising limitations of detailed targeting most clearly when contrasted with an alternative, zero–detailed marketing approach, which can be summarised thus:

Give the algorithm free rein to find the ideal audience.

Use precisely three data points for targeting, no more, no less:

• Sex
• Age
• Location

Now let’s get into some specifics of how to actually run your campaign in this way:

• Just one campaign per product or service (per country)
• All testing and scaling performed within that campaign
• Within that campaign, three active ad sets at any one time: one containing the proven ads, two for the test ads
• Budget set at the level of campaign, not the ad set, thereby instructing Facebook to spend a predetermined daily amount on the ad sets containing the ads driving the most engagement

In short: don’t overcomplicate your campaigns. By adopting this highly refined approach, you’ll free up time to focus on what you do best. The algorithm gets to work to its full potential, the ads get shown to those users who really want to see them—and the results speak for themselves, especially when compared to those we were seeing with detailed targeting:

• Less spend
• More scalability
• More stability (or, less volatility)
• Double or even triple the conversion rate
• More profitable ads (because you’ll no longer be spending budget on audience testing!)

This strategy is grounded in an oft-forgotten truth: sometimes keeping it simple is best for the Facebook ads algorithm. Through this approach, you’ll be able to structure your accounts to fully leverage the incredible power of Facebook’s AI and machine learning capabilities.

Of course, knowing when and how to keep things simple is actually easier said than done, requiring a surprising amount of expertise and experience. That’s when you might want to turn to a marketing agency specialising in Facebook ads.

Detailed targeting is not a panacea—but neither are Facebook ads in themselves

Perfecting your strategy for audience targeting counts for little if your ads themselves are poor. That’s why it’s best to test every week, always seeking to tweak and optimise your ads to maximise clients’ ROI.

Facebook ads are only one cog—a big cog, yes, but a cog nevertheless. They’re a tool of amplification, designed to get your product or service in front of the most receptive audience, and enhance their awareness of and engagement with your brand.

But once your ads are in front of the right people—well in a way that’s when the work really begins. Never stop reimagining and breathing new life into your creative—because no amount of targeting will help a lifeless ad!