How To Create A Lookalike Audience On Meta Ads Manager - Facebook

Lookalike audiences are limited or unavailable for some ads about financial products and services, employment or housing opportunities. Learn more.

Note: Targeting options are limited for audiences that include people under 18 (or older in some countries). Learn more about targeting options to reach teens and how this update may impact your ad sets.

A lookalike audience is a way to reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they're similar to your best existing customers.

You can use multiple lookalike audiences at the same time for a single ad set. In this instance, the ad set targets your ads to people in any of your selected lookalike audiences.

Before you begin

You need:

• A source with at least 100 people from a single country. We generally recommend a source audience that has between 1,000-5,000 people. You can create up to 500 lookalike audiences from a single source. People in your source audience are excluded from your lookalike audience.
• Admin or advertiser permissions on the ad account to create a lookalike audience from a custom audience.
• Admin permissions for the Page or Meta Pixel to create a lookalike audience from a Page or Meta Pixel.
• To be an administrator or developer of an app to create a lookalike audience for that app in addition to any other apps that have been shared with that ad account.

Create a lookalike audience

1. Open Audiences.

   You can also create a lookalike audience in Ads Manager creation below Audience following the same steps.

2. Select Create audience, then Lookalike audience.

   If you haven't created an audience before, select Create a lookalike audience.

   • Create new source or select your lookalike source. Saved audiences can't be used as a source.
   • Select audience location where you'd like to find a similar set of people.
   • Select audience size. You can choose Number of lookalike audiences. Choose a percentage of the population of the audience location you chose using the slider.
   • Select Create audience.
3. You will return to Audience and see your new lookalike audience.

Below Availability, you might see that your audience is:

• Populating: We’re matching your audience to profiles on Meta technologies. This can take up to 3 days. You can start running ads with this audience right away, but be aware that your audience size will increase as the audience is populated.
• Audience not created: This might mean the audience you used to create the lookalike audience was too small. Try again.
• Ready: You can use your audience. You might see Last edited on with the date someone in your ad account edited the audience. You can also click into the audience to see Last Updated, the last date we refreshed your audience. You don't need to wait for updates to use your audience.

Learn more

• About lookalike audiences
• Create a custom or lookalike audience in the leads center
• Create a value-based lookalike audience
• About Advantage+ lookalike