A Lookalike Audience targets a new group of people whose characteristics match your existing customer base. The audience is built from a custom audience as its source, so your ads can reach people who are similar to your current customers. This article walks you through creating Lookalike Audiences and using them during the campaign creation process in Ad Manager.

Locating the Lookalike Audience Option

When creating your campaign, switch to the Ad Set tab.

You can create Lookalike Audiences by scrolling down to "Audience Controls."

Clicking the dropdown to 'Create new or select lookalike audience' shows "Create a Lookalike Audience" as the first option.

Creating a Lookalike Audience

When you click 'Create a Lookalike Audience', a modal will open to guide you through defining the audience.

Data Source

Select one of the following as the source for your Lookalike Audience:

  • Page: The dropdown will display all the pages integrated with Ad Manager, from which you can select one.
  • Custom Audiences: The dropdown will list all the custom audiences within Ad Manager, allowing you to select one.

Audience Name

Give your audience a name so it's easy to identify later.

Geographic Location

Choose a country where you want to find people similar to your source audience. Only countries are supported at this time; cities, neighbourhoods, and provinces are not available for selection.

Audience Size

Define the audience size within a range of 0–10%. A 0–1% range includes people who closely match your source audience, while a higher percentage broadens the audience.

Create Audience

Once you've filled in all the details, click "Create Audience." The newly created Lookalike Audience will appear in the dropdown, but it may not be ready for immediate use.

Understanding Audience States

Your Lookalike Audience can be in one of the following states:

  • Ready: The audience is fully created, meets all Facebook specifications, and is ready to use in any campaign.
  • Populating: The audience is still being created, a process that takes between six and 24 hours. Once complete, the status will change to Ready, and the audience will refresh every 3–7 days while active.
  • Audience Not Created: This indicates that the source audience was too small to create a Lookalike Audience. You may need to create a new source audience.

Once your Lookalike Audience is ready, it will appear in the Lookalike Audience dropdown and be available for use in your campaigns.