Facebook’s Audience Insights tool has long been a valuable resource for marketers looking to learn more about their target audiences. However, in the wake of recent privacy changes and restrictions on data gathering, some have wondered whether Audience Insights still provides helpful insights.
What is Facebook Audience Insights?
Facebook Audience Insights is a free tool provided by Facebook that allows advertisers to analyze the demographics, interests, behaviors and more of their target audience on Facebook. It gives insight into age, gender, location, interests and page likes of the people in your target audience.
This enables advertisers, marketers and page owners to:
- Better understand their target audience
- Identify new potential target audiences
- Create more relevant ad campaigns
- Optimize Facebook page content
In the past, Audience Insights provided highly detailed information about target demographics and interests thanks to the vast amounts of data Facebook has on its users. However, data privacy concerns have led Facebook to scale back on the data available in Audience Insights.
How has Audience Insights changed?
In 2018, Facebook limited the detail of targeting options available to advertisers as part of an effort to better protect user privacy. This also impacted the data available in Audience Insights.
Some of the key changes include:
- Interest targeting limited to a set of broadly defined categories
- Reduced ability to target ads based on user behaviors and attributes
- Removal of the Ability to view unique audience reach estimates
- Removal of partner categories generated from third-party data providers
Facebook said these changes would prevent advertisers from misusing data to unfairly discriminate or violate privacy standards. However, it also meant Audience Insights would provide higher-level, less-specific insights compared to before.
What insights does Audience Insights still offer?
While Audience Insights has more limited data than before the 2018 changes, it still provides advertisers helpful insights into their target audience on Facebook. Some of the information you can still access includes:
- Gender breakdown
- Age range
- Location
- Language
- Highest education level
- Relationship status
- Lifestyle (expats, frequent travelers, etc)
- Top overall interests based on pages liked
You can analyze the demographics and interests of your:
- Page’s current audience
- Website’s current traffic
- Existing Custom Audience segments
- Lookalike Audiences
While this data doesn’t allow you to drill down to hyper-specific targeting attributes like before, it still provides helpful high-level insights to guide your targeting and content strategy.
Benefits of current Audience Insights
Here are some of the key benefits Audience Insights still offers:
- Gauge potential reach – View the total size of your target audience on Facebook to estimate how many users you could potentially reach.
- Identify opportunities – See if your audience skews heavily male vs female, or is mostly based in a certain country. This can reveal opportunities to reach more of a certain demographic.
- Guide ad targeting – The age, gender, location and interest data can help guide your ad targeting to optimize relevance.
- Inform content strategy – Know what your audience cares about based on top interests to create more engaging social content.
While not as robust as before, these high-level insights can still help advertisers make smarter marketing decisions when using Facebook.
Limitations of current Audience Insights
However, there are some clear limitations to the current version of Audience Insights compared to a few years ago. These include:
- Less specific interest targeting – Can only view broad interest categories vs specific page likes and attributes.
- No unique reach data – Unable to see the exact number of users your ads could potentially reach.
- Less data sources – Relies only on first-party Facebook data vs third-party data before.
- More user control – Users can opt out of certain types of targeting and data collection, skewing results.
The data is now mostly limited to higher-level demographics and interests. You lack granular insights that previously enabled ultra-targeted campaigns and content.
Should you still use Audience Insights?
While Audience Insights lacks the depth it once had, it can still provide helpful guidance for Facebook marketing. Some tips on making the most of the current version include:
- Supplement with other data – Combine insights from Audience Insights with analytics data from your website, campaigns and other sources.
- Test and iterate – Use Audience Insights to guide initial targeting, but continually test and optimize based on performance data.
- Prioritize interests – Focus more on the interest insights than demographics for content and campaign guidance.
- Look for gaps – Identify any major groups your audience lacks that could present opportunities.
Audience Insights shouldn’t be your sole source of audience information. But used wisely in combination with other tools, it can still help enhance your Facebook marketing at a strategic level.
The future of Audience Insights
Facebook has stated they are exploring new ways to provide audience insights while protecting people’s privacy. For example, they are looking into techniques like differentially private data, which reveals insights from aggregate data without compromising individual privacy.
It remains to be seen how much additional detail Facebook will be able to reveal about target audiences going forward. But the current version still offers helpful guidance for optimizing campaigns and content at a high level.
Conclusion
In summary:
- Facebook Audience Insights provides less granular, detailed data than it did previously due to privacy changes.
- However, it still offers helpful demographic, interest and lifestyle insights about your target audience.
- Use Audience Insights to guide high-level campaign targeting and content strategy.
- Combine it with other data sources to get a complete picture of your audience.
- Focus on interest-based insights for actionability.
- Continue testing and optimizing based on performance vs. audience data alone.
Audience Insights remains a useful tool for optimizing Facebook marketing despite its limitations compared to a few years ago. Used wisely in combination with other data, it can provide helpful strategic guidance on better reaching your target audience.