Is Facebook Targeting Expansion Becoming a Default?
Kama.Digital has been made aware that Facebook is implementing some changes to force advertisers to target more broadly using Targeting Expansion. It’s a big change that could potentially lead to more results, but it may also restrict advertisers wanting to limit targeting to a smaller group and implement audience testing.
Please note that Facebook has yet to confirm the changes being rolled out, but you may have already noticed the option being available at Ad set level in your campaigns.
So what does it mean? This is Kama digital take on what Targeting expansion is and how this will impact your advertising as a marketing manager.
When turned on, Facebook will automatically determine if more or cheaper conversions can be found outside of your designated audience. If Facebook sees better performance outside your defined audience, they may expand the audience further to include similar opportunities.
Note that age, gender, location, and language settings you make will continue to apply. Additionally, Facebook will respect any exclusions you added to your targeting when expanding your audience.
Targeting Expansion is available for all objectives, other than Reach and Brand Awareness. It also cannot be used when promoting a Special Ad Category.
How will this change impact you?
Facebook announced in Marketing API v12.0, that Targeting Expansion will be turned on automatically when optimizing for conversions, value, or app events while using the Conversions objective.
When Targeting Expansion is turned on automatically in these cases, advertisers will not be able to turn it off.
We have to admit, the team at Kama.Digital wasn’t really happy about that change at first, and we are still unsure of its benefits or not. We usually enjoy testing different audiences and simply having that choice available to us. But this update has forced us to have a closer look at how targeting expansion works and how it will change the way we use Facebook ads.
One of the surface-level problems with Targeting Expansion is that when you turn it on, the “Potential Audience” immediately increases to the size it would be if you removed all targeting restrictions within a location.
Again, it is important to highlight that Facebook may not actually applyTargeting Expansion on your campaign. It’s just that Facebook COULD expand your audience as much as the delivery system wants if it may lead to more conversions.
“In theory,” you could end up with more conversions if Facebook expands your audience. But, there’s a whole lot of grey area happening as well as there is no easy way to get reporting from Facebook on if or how much Facebook applied Targeting Expansion when it’s turned on. There’s no column that shows you additional conversions because you reached people outside of your initial target audience.
Does it Work?
We haven’t had previous great success with Targeting Expansion at Kama.Digital. However, with Facebook forcing us all to use it, we have had to have a relook at this option and we are seeing better results than expected for Lead Generation campaigns .
Part of us don’t like being pushed into a corner and forced upon using this feature with no other options. Smaller business and digital Managers should still be able to choose how they spend their budget.
But at the same time, “in theory,” Targeting Expansion may not even be applied. If the audience you are targeting is so great, Facebook may not need to ever apply Targeting Expansion. Or it may only use it a little. And it SHOULD lead to better results.
“In theory,” of course. And we’ll never know whether it was applied or not.
SO IS AUDIENCE TESTING DEAD ON FACEBOOK?
Our guess is YES !
Facebook is really pushing for advertisers to only set one Ad set per campaign. So this change will result in no need to spread your budget across several ad sets. It won’t matter as Facebook will expand the targeting anyway (or possibly not), so you may as well not spread your budget, the budget being in one adset, it will pass the learning process quicker.
Facebook will choose the targeting based on your pixel data to optimise your campaigns despite the recent changes with IOS 14 cutting the data short, the pixel data is still relevant.
We are keen to hear your opinion of the changes, so please pop us a comment !
