Audience Targeting

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---
name: Audience Targeting
description: Builds and refines audience and segment targeting for paid campaigns. Use when launching campaigns, diagnosing poor reach quality, or expanding into new customer segments.
---

# Audience Targeting

Audience targeting determines who sees the ad. A perfect ad shown to the wrong audience converts poorly. Targeting work begins before creative work and should be revisited monthly as audiences saturate.

## Start With First-Party Audiences

First-party audiences outperform interest and demographic targeting consistently. Build the following audiences first: (1) customer list — upload CRM data matched to platform users; (2) high-value customer segment — filter the customer list to top 20% by LTV; (3) website visitors by page — separate product viewers from checkout abandoners; (4) email engagers — opened or clicked in last 90 days. These audiences are owned, not rented, and improve as the business grows. Do not launch interest-based targeting until first-party audiences are fully built.

## Use Lookalikes as Expansion Vehicles

Lookalike audiences should be seeded from the highest-quality first-party signal available — typically the top LTV customer segment, not the full customer list. On Meta, start with 1-2% lookalikes for precision; expand to 3-5% only after proving CAC at the tighter level. On Google, customer match and similar segments serve the same function. Lookalike quality degrades at large sizes — monitor CAC as audience percentage increases.

## Layer, Do Not Stack

Layering narrows an audience by requiring multiple criteria (interest AND behavior AND demographic). Stacking broadens it by adding more targeting options within a category. Layering improves precision but reduces volume; stacking does the opposite. For prospecting campaigns with volume goals, avoid over-layering — let the platform's algorithm optimize within a broad-but-relevant audience. For retargeting, layer aggressively to reach users with the strongest intent signals.

## Define Audience Exclusions

Exclusions are as important as inclusions. Always exclude: current customers from acquisition campaigns; recent converters from retargeting for a post-purchase window; low-quality segments identified in prior campaigns. Failing to exclude current customers from acquisition campaigns wastes budget and inflates reported conversion rates with organic purchases.
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