Common Facebook Advertising Targeting Mistake

One of the most common facebook advertising mistakes I see when looking into clients audience targeting is very simple, yet can be very detrimental to a campaign (or ad set, I should say) if not recognized.

The mistake...

Adding multiple lines of Detailed Targeting options without using the "Narrow Audience" feature, as seen here:

I've seen so many cases where advertisers simply pile on targeting options, not realizing that is telling the system that the audience can fall into any on of those options, rather than all of them.

So you're telling the system to meet the criteria of:

Targeting option #1

OR

Targeting option #2

OR

Targeting option #3

Rather than:

Targeting option #1

AND

Targeting option #2

AND

Targeting option #3

Just think of "Narrow Audience" as an AND statement rather than an OR statement, which is what most mistakenly do by adding targeting options to the same field, like this:

Notice how Facebook does not include the word "OR" in there? Sneaky sneaky if you're a newbie.

It should look like this:

This will allow you to reach much more specific audiences, as you are able to target multiple layers of interests, behaviors, and demographic traits they exhibit.

Don't get me wrong, using an OR statement will allow you to expand your audience to reach a larger amount of people — so it has it's place, but it is widely confused (in my experience) that clients believe this means the audience will meet the criteria of all of the options they input, rather than just one of them.

I hope this helps clear up any confusion! Has this happened to you? Let me know in the comments.