Note: Over the next few weeks, we will be making changes to Targeting within Ads Manager. To learn more about the changes refer to Changes Coming to Targeting.
Targeting Expansion is an intelligent feature that automatically helps you find the right audience for your ads. When enabled, Targeting Expansion will expand your targeting settings when the system predicts it will be hard to deliver ads based on your initial targeting selections.
To enable Targeting Expansion, you will need to select which targeting settings, from your initial selection, you want expanded:
Audience: Expand targeting beyond your Custom or Lookalike Audience.
Gender: Include both genders in your target audience.
Age: Widen the age range of your potential audience.
Interest & Behavior: Explore additional user interests and behaviors.
Note: Targeting Expansion is not available on Pangle.
Because Targeting Expansion is automatically applied, there is no set time when the system will update the targeting settings.
How to enable Targeting Expansion
Targeting Expansion is enabled from an Ad Group's Targeting Module. From there:
Make your initial targeting selections from the Audience, Location, Age, Gender, Interest & Behavior, and Device modules.
Enable the Targeting Expansion toggle.
Select which targeting settings you want to expand: Audience, Age, Gender, and Interest & Behavior.
You can only select to expand a targeting setting if you used it in your initial targeting selection.
4. Complete your Ad Group.
FAQs
I enabled Targeting Expansion when I'm creating ad groups but why does the Audience Size Estimation remain the same?
The Audience Size Estimation Tool uses your targeting criteria to determine the size of the audience. As such, the tool will not provide an updated audience size when you enable Targeting Expansion.
What will happen if I am promoting a product with age targeting restrictions and I use Targeting Expansion to expand the Age setting?
The system will block ad delivery to underage users and not cause any conflict with any age targeting restrictions.
How will Targeting Expansion affect my Custom Audience? Will my initial Custom Audience be ignored when Targeting Expansion is applied?
Not immediately, our model will always consider the initial Custom Audience when evaluating ad delivery. Our system will only consider using the expanded audience once it determines there is a greater likelihood of delivering ads to the expanded audience than the initial Custom Audience.
When will Targeting Expansion start using the expanded audience pool for ad delivery?
There is no set time when the system will apply the expanded targeting settings. Instead, the expanded settings will automatically be applied when the system determines there is a greater chance of delivering ads to the expanded audience than the original one.