About Estimated Audience Size | Meta Business Help Center

Estimated Audience Size generally estimates how many Accounts Center accounts meet the targeting criteria that advertisers select while creating an ad.

Estimates update in real time during the ad creation experience using targeting configuration that considers many factors, such as:

• How many Accounts Center accounts were shown ads across Meta technologies and services in the past 30 days.
• Self-reported demographics like age and gender.
• Where Accounts Center accounts see ads (for example, in Facebook Feed or Instagram Stories).

Your choices for your ad set in Ads Manager also determine estimates, such as:

• Location targeting
• Audience targeting, such as age and gender targeting, language targeting, custom audiences, detailed targeting etc.
• Placement/devices targeting
• Brand suitability settings

Estimates may vary over time and should not be interpreted as the number of Accounts Center accounts who will actually view your ads. When your audience is expanded through Advantage+ products and some other features the estimated audience size will not reflect the total number of Accounts Center accounts that meet the targeting criteria. At this time, Estimated Audience Size does not reflect users on WhatsApp whose age is unknown.

The number of Accounts Center accounts your campaign actually ends up reaching depends on your budget and performance.

Additional information

Estimated audience size is not a proxy for Monthly Active Users (MAU), Monthly Active People (MAP), Daily Active Users (DAU), or Daily Active People (DAP) on Meta, or engagement. (Meta's quarterly earnings announcements provide this information.)

Estimates aren't designed to match population, census estimates or other sources and may differ depending on factors such as:

• How many accounts across Meta technologies a person has
• How many temporary visitors are in a particular geographic location at a given time
• Meta user-reported demographics

Note: In cases where a person has connected their Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp accounts in Accounts Center, their Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp accounts will be counted collectively as a single account for ads estimation purposes. If a person has not connected their Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp accounts in Accounts Center, their accounts will be counted as multiple accounts for ads estimation purposes.

Learn more

• About ads targeting