Facebook ads can reach a wide range of target audiences, depending on the goals and budget of the advertiser. With over 2 billion monthly active users, Facebook provides marketers an unprecedented opportunity to connect with specific demographics and psychographics. Understanding the core Facebook demographics and how to best utilize Facebook’s detailed targeting options is crucial for running effective ads.
Facebook Core Demographics
Facebook’s massive user base spans many ages, locations, interests and backgrounds. However, there are some clear demographic trends among average Facebook users that inform common targeting strategies:
- Age: Around 90% of Facebook users are between the ages of 18 and 44. The largest segment is the 25-34 age range. Targeting younger audiences typically works best.
- Gender: There are slightly more female than male Facebook users worldwide (54% vs 46%). Certain products/services may resonate better with one gender.
- Location: Most Facebook users are urban and suburban residents in developed countries. Ads can be targeted by country, state, city, ZIP code and more.
- Income: Around half of U.S. Facebook users have an annual household income of over $75,000. Higher income brackets present potential customers.
- Interests: Facebook gathers expansive data on users’ interests, which allows targeting ads by hobby, passion or lifestyle.
In general, Facebook users tend to be younger, socially connected, mass-market consumers interested in entertainment media, communication with others, and exploring/sharing new products and services. However, even within the core demographics, hundreds of millions of users around the world represent a diverse range of potential target audiences for ads.
Detailed Targeting Options
Facebook offers an extensive set of targeting options beyond basic demographics like age, gender and location. Advertisers can combine and customize these targeting parameters to zero in on their ideal audience:
Interests
One of the most powerful Facebook targeting dimensions is users’ interests. When creating Facebook ads, you can target based on Facebook pages users have liked or topics they have engaged with. Interest categories include:
- Sports teams, athletes and leagues
- Television shows, movies and entertainment
- Public figures and organizations
- Hobbies like photography, travel or cooking
- Important causes and social issues
- Academic fields and professional industries
- Online and offline interest groups and meetups
- Popular products, brands, apps and websites
Interest targeting allows advertisers to reach audiences passionate and engaged with their product or niche. For example, a baseball team could target fans who have liked relevant MLB Facebook pages. Or an action movie could target audiences interested in similar high-intensity films and franchises.
Behaviors
Facebook ads can also be targeted based on how users actually behave across the web and within the Facebook app. This reveals intent beyond stated interests. Behavior targeting options include:
- Purchase behaviors
- Mobile device usage
- Business and industry connections
- Travel preferences
- Charitable donations
- Online shopping patterns
- Facebook activity and usage
For example, a clothing brand could target audiences who have purchased apparel from similar brands. Or an airline could target people who frequently travel between two destination cities.
Connections
Targeting users based on their connections allows ads to reach audiences relevant to a specific group or cause. Connection types include:
- Relationship status
- Employer
- Education and schools attended
- Current city and hometown
- Friends of fans/customers
- Member of groups and causes
- Expats living abroad
- Parents, families and households
For instance, a clothing brand could target single 20-somethings by relationship status. Or a university could advertise to users who attended a competing school per their education history.
Demographics
Facebook offers detailed options for targeting age, gender, language, income, home ownership and more. While less specific than interest and behavior targeting, demographics can help focus ads on broad customer archetypes. Options include:
- Age
- Gender
- Language
- Education level
- Income and net worth
- Home ownership and type
- Household composition
- Ethnic affinity
- Generation segment
- Parenting stage
For example, a luxury brand could target high-income professionals in their 30s and 40s. Or a snack food company could target middle-income parents aged 25 to 45.
Custom Audiences
For advertisers with existing customer data, Custom Audiences allow targeting users based on unique identifiers like emails, phone numbers and other offline data. Uploaded contacts can be turned into targetable Custom Audiences for similar users. This enables ads tailored to past customers and prospects.
Lookalike Audiences
Building on Custom Audiences, Lookalike Audiences use AI to find new users with similar qualities to an advertiser’s existing customers. This helps scale campaigns to new audiences likely to share interests and preferences. The more data provided on current customers, the more accurate the lookalike targeting.
Detailed Targeting Strategies
With so many targeting options, the optimal Facebook audience depends on each brand’s goals, ideal customers, product, messaging and assets.
Here are some common targeting strategies:
- Laser-focused – Combine interests, behaviors, connections and demographics to reach a highly specific niche.
- Lookalike expansion – Start with existing Custom Audiences and find Lookalike Audiences to drive growth.
- Geo-targeted – Use location parameters to geo-fence ads to local/regional audiences.
- Platform-specific – Target audiences active on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger or WhatsApp.
- Interest-based – Focus on interests closely related to the product, brand or cause.
- Behavior-based – Target audiences demonstrating purchase intent signals.
- Demographic – Target broad age, gender, income or other demographic bands.
Testing different audience segments is key to optimize targeting and costs. The ideal target audience will generate the highest return on ad spend.
Core Best Practices
Some core best practices apply when defining your target audience for Facebook ads:
- Focus on targeting options that indicate real intent to purchase or engage.
- Test interest, behavior and demographic targets to see what resonates.
- Target lookalike audiences of 1-5% of your customer base for new reach.
- Layer targets together to reach a hyper-specific audience.
- Try narrowing your audience when using special ad formats like video.
- Monitor performance data to identify your highest-converting segments.
- Adjust targeting based on campaign objectives, whether awareness or conversion.
Optimizing Based on Performance
The most successful Facebook advertisers constantly optimize their targeting approach based on campaign data and performance. Key optimization tips include:
- Analyze your best-performing ad sets to identify high-value target audiences.
- Create Custom Audiences from your Convertors list for focused retargeting.
- Eliminate targeting that is not generating conversions or quality results.
- Expand the reach of well-performing targets with Lookalike Audiences.
- Frequently update targeting as interests/behaviors change over time.
- Monitor costs per result to identify the most efficient target segments.
Continual optimization requires in-depth analysis of Facebook reporting and being agile with targeting adjustments. Use learnings to create higher-converting variations of ad sets over time.
Targeting Don’ts
Some common Facebook targeting mistakes to avoid include:
- Relying solely on broad targeting without any interest, behavior or lookalike filters.
- Using a “spray and pray” approach without analyzing data.
- Setting targeting too broad that ad relevance suffers.
- Setting targeting too narrow that reach is limited.
- Forgetting to expand beyond core demographics to other potential customers.
- Sticking with a static target audience despite changes in campaign performance.
- Assuming your entire customer base will respond similarly to ads.
Customizing targeting to each campaign’s true goal while analyzing results can help avoid these pitfalls.
Target Size Considerations
When assessing potential target audiences, it helps to have an idea of relative size and reach. Some examples include:
| Targeting Dimension | Potential Reach |
| Single interest | 100,000s to 10,000,000s |
| Niche interest | 100,000s to 1,000,000s |
| Specific behavior | 100,000s to 1,000,000s |
| Single demographic | 1,000,000s to 100,000,000s |
| Lookalike Audiences | 100,000s to 10,000,000s |
| Layered targeting | 10,000s to 1,000,000s |
Monitoring potential reach estimates when building audiences helps avoid targets that are too narrow or broad.
Conclusion
Facebook provides exceptional targeting flexibility for advertisers. While Facebook’s core demographics skew young and urban, detailed interests, behaviors, connections and more can be combined to reach very specific audiences. Optimizing based on campaign performance data is key to honing in on your ideal customers. Avoiding common targeting mistakes like overly broad or narrow targeting helps maximize results. With so many options available, testing different target segments is necessary to determine which resonate best.