Audience Suggestions Are an Illusion of Control

Should Meta eliminate audience suggestions?

Now hear me out because I know it sounds crazy. But the reality is that those who fight this the most are the ones who would benefit the most.

Before we get started, a little foundation for determining whether eliminating audience suggestions is a viable idea. We need to answer two questions.

First, do audience suggestions provide a proven value? And second, is that proven value worth the confusion, frustration, and mistakes that are caused by them?

Let’s dive in.

Years ago, advertisers completely controlled targeting. All of the various targeting inputs explicitly defined who could be reached with our ads.

Meta eventually moved to automatically expanding our audience and eventually a setup where algorithmic targeting was prioritized. It’s quite clear that Meta would prefer we don’t get in the way of targeting at all.

You have to go through several clicks and warnings of “are you sure?” to actually restrict your targeting. Before that even happens, you have the option of providing audience suggestions.

I’m convinced that Meta offered audience suggestions as a way of softening the transition from full advertiser control over targeting to virtually none. It was a bit of a bridge.

But the suggestion makes us think our inputs matter when they rarely do.

Audience suggestions include age range, gender, custom audiences, lookalike audiences, and detailed targeting.

Meta will ignore your suggestions for age and gender every time if it means finding more optimized results. This is something that is easily proven with breakdowns.

And if Meta is ignoring audience suggestions of age and gender, you can bet the same is happening with lookalike audiences and detailed targeting.

The problem is that this is much tougher to prove. And Meta has so much data and so many user signals, it’s debatable what value detailed targeting and lookalike audiences provide now anyway.

No matter what you think about them, it’s important to remember this.

For the most common performance goals, your detailed targeting and lookalike audiences will always be suggestions. ALWAYS.

You can’t restrict by detailed targeting or lookalikes when optimizing for conversions.

But many advertisers assume audience suggestions are tight constraints. They create multiple ad sets based on audience suggestions, which basically just creates multiple ad sets that can target the same people.

So, let’s go back to our initial questions to determine whether Meta should keep audience suggestions.

Do audience suggestions provide a proven value?

I’ve seen no indication that suggestions impact age and gender distribution. Meta will always show your ads to whoever it wants to help you get the most results.

And there’s no way to prove one way or the other that Meta prioritizes detailed targeting and lookalike audiences as suggestions.

Meta could prove this, of course, with a breakdown option that would segment our results by audience suggestions and everything beyond them. But that doesn’t exist, and I assume there’s a reason for that.

The second question was whether any value of audience suggestions was worth the confusion, frustration, and mistakes caused by them.

Since it’s not clear they do anything at all, I say ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Advertisers are led to believe that their audience suggestions are either tight constraints or do more than they think.

The result is that they get angry and frustrated when Meta “ignores” those suggestions. Or they create multiple ad sets based on suggestions, thinking they are going to completely separate groups when they’re not.

It’s a waste of time and energy, and it makes results worse.

The reality is that audience suggestions are an unnecessary step. They give advertisers a sense of control that they don’t have.

It’s the illusion of control.

Meta needs to rip off the band-aid. Eliminate suggestions.

Would there be initial outrage? Absolutely!

But it would force advertisers to consolidate their budget. It would force them to understand how and when to use value rules. It would force them to stop obsessing over targeting so they could focus on the things that actually matter.

So here’s the bottom of the glass.

I don’t know if Meta’s going to remove audience suggestions any time soon, but I also wouldn’t be surprised if it happens eventually.

Regardless, you should start planning for that day. You’d get better results by adjusting anyway.

I don’t use audience suggestions anymore, and you don’t need to either. They’re unlikely helpful.

If they were, Meta would have given us the tools to prove it by now.

Take a hands-off approach to targeting. When you stop obsessing over all of these counterproductive targeting inputs, you consolidate your budget.

You simplify your campaign construction. And you focus on what matters the most, which is your ads.