Campaign Creation Targeting Overview

Targeting forms part of the Audience creation process and it can be found in the Audience tab when creating a campaign. Targeting allows specifying the different target audiences that you would like to reach when defining your audience. Locations, Custom Audiences & Detailed Targeting, and Mobile Targeting are the main big targeting options in Smartly.io.

Countries, cities and user location allow specifying different options concerning locations to be included as part of the targeting. Target users also allow you to include the relationship that targeted people has with the locations specified. E.g. when selecting Rome as a city, People who live in this location means those who have set their current city as Rome in Facebook.

Additionally, more advanced user location options can be selected by clicking on "Show advanced locations options". E.g. Zip Codes, Regions, Excluded Locations and so on.

The Age slider bar allows choosing the age range between 13 - 65+ years. The Gender button is for selecting if targeting only males, females or all (if no option is selected it behaves at All).

The language search bar allows specifying the different people that will be targeted based on languages that Facebook consider they understand.

Note: This can be checked on Facebook by clicking on the small arrow located in the top right bar of your Facebook page and then Settings > Languages)

Furthermore, the language of the different call-to-action buttons displayed in ads, such as "Shop Now", "Book Now", "Like it" and so on will be automatically shown based on the language that a user has set on for the Facebook's interface. For example, if a user has their Facebook in Spanish, instead of seeing "Like it" they will see "Me gusta" for the language of the call-to-action button to be displayed in the ad.

Custom Audiences & Detailed Targeting

Custom Audiences & Detailed Targeting allows selecting more categories besides Locations. These categories include Behaviors, Demographics, Interests, Custom Audiences, Connections (actions related to a Facebook's Page, App or Event) and More Categories (Facebook Categories).

The list containing the different categories available shows when clicking either on the Browse button or from the sidebar selector. Additionally, flexible targeting is supported.

Narrow Audience Further and Exclude People allows you to narrow down the specified targeting.

Note: Facebook Categories (former User Cluster & Partner Categories) is a whitelisted feature on Facebook. Ask your Account Manager to activate it once it has been already whitelisted on Facebook. More information here.

Also, if you select "Use Expanded Targeting", people with similar interests will be included.

Mobile Targeting

Mobile targeting allows specifying the version of the mobile operating system that wants to be targeted. This field is required for Mobile App Installs Ads and optional for the rest of the campaign objectives. Many different versions of iOS and Android can be selected.

Feature phones (non-smartphones), only over WIFI and/or 3G or 4G networks can be optionally added to the targeting. Note: 3G/4G targeting does not work with Instagram placement.

*Note: The more targeting options are selected the more specific your targeting will become. This will make the estimated reach of your audience smaller, but on the other hand it will reach a more relevant audience.

Connections

Prior Facebook API v10 you could choose to include connections and friends of connections, as well as, exclude those connections. As of Facebook API v10, this feature ahs been deprecated. If you are cloning an old campaign, you may encounter errors caused by the feature.

FAQ:

Why are my targeting browser and search options not in English?

Targeting will map your ad account's country to the local language and will use this language to fetch localized targeting options from Facebook. Same happens also on PowerEditor. The reason for using localized targeting options is that some options are not available for all languages. For example, the US does not have some Great Britain's education options and Finnish doesn't have all German job title options.

Therefore, if the checkbox is selected you will see the targeting options of your local language. However, if want to see only the targeting options associated with the English language, then do not select this checkbox.

This checkbox can be found in Settings -> Campaign Defaults -> "Use localized targeting options"

Why are Job Titles not available in the targeting browser?

Some targeting categories like job titles and employers are only available via the targeting search. To search only within a specific category you can select the category as a "pre-filter" on the left side of the search input.