Target a Facebook audience

Step 3 of campaign creation in Legacy Hootsuite Ads is where you define your campaign’s target audience. Load a saved audience that was created previously, split test multiple saved audiences, or create a new audience by manually completing each field.

Your campaign’s targeting can be defined using location, demographics, behaviors, interests, or any combination of these things, including specific inclusions and exclusions. Legacy Hootsuite Ads targeting offers a powerful way to fine tune your audience by intersecting these groups.

Create an audience

On the Audience step (3) of campaign creation, begin selecting your criteria from each section.

Important: The new EU Digital Services Act requires social media companies, like Meta, to provide greater transparency on ads served through their platforms. If you want to publish ad sets that target audiences worldwide, or in EU countries or associated territories on Meta's platforms, you must ensure each such ad set includes beneficiary and payer information.

Ad sets that do not comply will be rejected by Meta and not published on its platforms. Learn more about the EU Digital Services Act.

Location

• Enter specific locations like cities, states, or countries into the search field manually, and then select from the options that populate. Country groups can also be targeted.
  • Up to 200 regions, and 250 cities can be targeted at once.
• Click Include on the left if you want to Exclude the selected locations instead.
  
• Click Bulk upload to upload a csv or xslx file of all your included or excluded target locations at once. Or click paste your locations here to paste in a group of locations. Note that uploaded locations need to be unique, so cities and zip codes must be accompanied by the country code (e.g., 20127, IT)
  
• Click Advanced options to target by language.

Demographics

• Here you can select targeting by gender, age, and relationship status. Click the plus sign to split test on age.
  

Detailed targeting

• Enter specific behaviors, interests, demographics or categories into the search bar, and then select from the options that populate.
  • Click all of above below the selected criteria to target an audience that matches all the criteria.
  • Click any of above to target an audience that matches any of the criteria. Use this option to split test any of the included targets in the group.
  • Click none of above to exclude anyone who matches any of the criteria.
  
• Click the light bulb to the right of the search bar to find additional suggestions based on your current targeting selections.
• Check Expand interests to let Facebook find additional people for your audience to increase your conversions at a lower cost.

Custom audiences

• Include or exclude one of your custom audiences along with the other targeting parameters you have already defined.

When you have finished defining your audience, you can check Save specified audience for future uses to save yourself the work of defining it again for future campaigns.

Split test on interests, behaviors, or categories

To split test interests, behaviors or categories, keep them all in one group and use the "or" coordinator, by clicking any of above below the group.

Then, based on what you chose to split test, you can select to run a split test on that group (that is, Interests, Behaviors, or Categories) from the What do you want to test pop up between steps 3 and 4.