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This is something I’ve been speculating on for a long time now. Do audience suggestions work?
Now I have two very clear examples of this…
Example #1
One example was a test I did a few months back using Advantage+ Audience with and without suggestions. When I use them, I assign custom audiences that match my audience segments.
When I compared the results, I actually reached those parts of the audience the most when I didn’t give any suggestions at all.
Example #2
And now we have a new example, this time related to the age range…
I recommend using Advantage+ Audience when you’re preparing for conversions, but especially for purchases. When preparing leads, you need to monitor them closely to watch for problems. Well, I encountered such a problem recently.
If you use Advantage+ Audience, you have the option to provide audience suggestions.
When I ran an ad set optimized for leads that didn’t use suggestions, I found using the age breakdown that Meta spent 70% of my budget on people over 55.
I’m fine with spending money on all age brackets, but I’ve been finding these leads to be low quality.
Since I wasn’t using audience suggestions, I decided to try again with a suggested age range of 25 to 44.
Remember that you cannot set an upper age audience control when using Advantage+ Audience. As a result, Meta can still deliver beyond that range.
However, that proposal did not materialize. Meta still spent over 78% of my budget on people outside the suggested age range.
Why This Happened
In theory, it makes sense why this happens. Meta focuses on getting you as many of your goals as possible within your budget. Audience controls can limit the algorithm’s ability to do that. While that makes sense when you’re talking about expanding audiences beyond lookalike audiences or detailed targeting, it can be problematic here.
I’ve talked before about how Meta needs to fix this with Advantage+ Audience. There are times when age or gender need to control the audience or not be used.
One last point. I wouldn’t use this as a reason to avoid Advantage+ Audience when preparing leads in all cases. I even did a segmentation test a few months ago that showed the Advantage+ Audience without suggestions generated more and higher quality leads than detailed and visual targeting. It’s something you need to watch out for.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
