Having a bad audience overlap on Facebook ads can significantly impact the performance and optimization of your campaigns. Audience overlap refers to the percentage of people in your target audiences that overlap or are the same across campaigns. Some overlap is expected, but too much overlap can lead to issues like ad fatigue, frequency capping, and poor optimization.
What Causes Bad Audience Overlap?
There are a few key causes of bad audience overlap on Facebook:
- Targeting the same broad audiences across multiple campaigns – For example, targeting all US Facebook users 18-65 for every campaign.
- Using lookalike audiences based on the same seed audiences across campaigns – This essentially duplicates your audiences.
- Layering interests and demographics that significantly overlap – Targeting the same interests or demographics will cause overlap.
- Re-using the same custom audiences across multiple campaigns – This guarantees 100% overlap.
- Having a small overall target audience size – Small audiences are more likely to overlap.
Essentially, bad audience overlap happens when you don’t diversify your targeting enough across campaigns. You end up showing your ads to the same people repeatedly.
What Are the Problems With High Audience Overlap?
High audience overlap causes a few key issues:
- Ad Fatigue – Showing your ads to the same people over and over can cause fatigue and banner blindness. They become less likely to engage each time they see your ad.
- Frequency Capping – Hitting the frequency cap limits too quickly from overlap means your ads won’t be shown as often.
- Poor Optimization – Facebook’s algorithms optimize best with a broad, diverse reach. Overlap limits the optimization.
- Wasted Spend – Paying to show your ads to the same people repeatedly is inefficient spend.
- Lower Relevance – Highly overlapping audiences are less likely to be highly interested in your ads.
In summary, bad overlap leads to poor campaign performance, engagement, optimization, and relevance to your audiences. Less diverse reach limits Facebook’s ability to find your best potential customers.
What is Considered a Bad Amount of Audience Overlap?
There is no definitive threshold for when audience overlap is “bad” on Facebook. It depends on your goals, industry, audiences, and other factors. However, here are some general overlap benchmarks:
- Under 30% overlap is ideal for most advertisers
- 30-50% overlap is acceptable in some cases
- 50-70% overlap starts getting excessive for most advertisers
- 70%+ overlap is typically considered very high and detrimental
Keep in mind audience size also impacts overlap. For example, 50% overlap may be fine if you have very large audiences. But with smaller audiences, 50% would be excessive overlap. Use your best judgment based on your campaign objectives.
How to Check Audience Overlap in Ads Manager
You can check your audience overlap in Facebook Ads Manager in a few simple steps:
- Navigate to the “Audiences” section
- Click the “Audience Overlap” tool
- Select the audiences you want to compare
- View the percentage overlap between those audiences
You can compare both custom audiences and broader target audiences here. Try checking overlap across your key campaigns to identify any issues.
Tips to Minimize Bad Audience Overlap
Here are some tips to avoid excessive audience overlap in your Facebook ads:
- Create larger, more generalized audiences for the awareness stage
- Use more specific detailed targeting for consideration and conversion campaigns
- Test different interests, behaviors, and demographics for each campaign
- Build custom audiences from different website actions or CRM data
- Create new seed audiences for each lookalike audience
- Set frequency capping rules to limit over-exposure
- Check audience overlap routinely and adjust targeting
Diversifying your targeting and audiences takes work, but pays off significantly in improved campaign results and Facebook spend efficiency.
Case Study: Reducing Audience Overlap to Improve ROAS
Let’s look at a case study showing how reducing audience overlap dramatically improved results for an ecommerce advertiser on Facebook.
Campaign Situation
- Advertiser running multiple Facebook conversion campaigns
- Noticing fatigue and poor optimization in their audiences
- Checking Ads Manager revealed >70% audience overlap
- ROAS had been steadily declining across campaigns
Changes Implemented
- Created broader, more generalized audiences for awareness campaigns
- Used narrower, more specific targeting for conversion campaigns
- Built new custom audiences from recent converters
- Set frequency caps of 3-4 per week on conversion campaigns
Results
- Audience overlap decreased from over 70% to around 40%
- Frequency capping ensured customers only saw conversion ads a few times per week maximum
- The broader audiences improved overall campaign reach and awareness
- More specific targeting on conversion campaigns showed ads to better matched audiences
- ROAS increased by 35% across all campaigns in the first month
This example clearly shows the value of monitoring and minimizing audience overlap. The advertiser saw dramatic improvements in both campaign performance and efficiency of ad spend. Less overlap provided room for Facebook to optimize and find the best potential customers.
Final Tips for Minimizing Audience Overlap
Here are some final tips to remember when trying to minimize audience overlap on Facebook:
- Check overlap regularly – Audience behaviors shift over time naturally
- Always be testing – Try new targeting methods and audiences continually
- Build larger audiences – Larger audiences have more room for optimization
- Use exclusions – Exclude existing custom audiences from new targeting
- Plan for each campaign objective – Tailor targeting separately for each part of the funnel
Controlling audience overlap takes effort, but it’s one of the most impactful optimization strategies for Facebook ad performance. Use these tips and always be testing to maximize your campaign results.
Conclusion
Bad audience overlap is caused by repeatedly targeting the same groups of people across campaigns. High overlap leads to issues like ad fatigue, poor optimization, and frequency capping that severely hurt campaign performance. As a best practice, aim to keep audience overlap under 30% if possible. Checking the overlap metrics in Ads Manager and diversifying your targeting are key ways to minimize excessive overlap. Put in the work to control audience overlap, and you will see major improvements in your Facebook ad results.