How to Use Facebook Audience Insights to Target Like a Pro

Why Audience Targeting Still Drives Performance in 2025

The Meta algorithm is smart. But it still needs direction.

When you hand-feed it quality data — whether that's tight interest segments, clearly-defined custom audiences, or behavior-driven lookalikes — your ads enter a completely different league.

Done right, you'll see:

• Lower CPMs

• Higher CTRs

• Tighter cost-per-result benchmarks

• Scalable results with fewer variables

If you're running Facebook Ads without a structured audience strategy, you're running blind.

Start with Facebook Audience Insights

Access Audience Insights inside Meta Business Suite under "Audiences" or directly within Ads Manager when creating a Saved Audience. Here, you can analyze:

• Demographics (age, gender, job titles)

• Devices

• Page Likes

• Lifestyle segments

• Top locations

It’s the sandbox we use to model our ideal customer before the first dollar is spent.

Four Core Targeting Types (And When to Use Each)

1. Interest-Based Audiences

Still essential for cold campaigns, especially at the top of funnel.

We typically layer niche interests with platform behaviors. Example: Instead of just targeting “Skincare”, we build stacks like:

• “CeraVe” + “Guardian Singapore” + “Digital Wallets”

This avoids broad audience fatigue and improves learning speed.

Pro tip: Exclude brand-aware audiences when testing new hooks to isolate creative impact.

2. Behavior-Based Audiences

Meta’s behavioral data is next-level. Tap into:

• Frequent travelers

• Device users (e.g., iPhone 14)

• Online shoppers

• People who’ve clicked ads in the past 7 days

These are warm behaviors — and they compound your campaign's efficiency.

3. Custom Audiences

Where we do the heavy lifting.

Custom audiences are built from:

• Pixel-tracked web visitors

• Video views (we segment by % watched)

• Engagements (comments, saves, DMs)

• Uploaded CRM lists (email, phone)

You don’t run remarketing without custom audiences — period. This is where your warm-to-hot funnel is built.

4. Lookalike Audiences

This is how we scale.

But here’s the mistake most brands make: they build lookalikes off everyone who visited the homepage. That’s noise.

We build ours off:

• High LTV customers

• Lead forms submitted in the last 90 days

• Completed purchases only

• Loyalty program participants

With strong seed data, 1% lookalikes become a high-performing cold layer. We then scale to 3–5% once we confirm baseline performance.

Targeting Strategy by Funnel Stage

Here’s how we typically sequence targeting across a conversion funnel:

• Top of Funnel (TOF): Lookalikes (1%), Broad+Interest

• Middle of Funnel (MOF): Website viewers, 75% video viewers, Insta engagers

• Bottom of Funnel (BOF): Cart abandoners, product page viewers, previous purchasers

Each layer runs different messaging, different creative, and different CTAs.

Real Application: Scaling a Local Brand

We helped a Singapore-based dental chain who was getting weak results from generic 5km radius targeting.

Here’s what we rebuilt:

• TOF: Women aged 30–50, interests in “Invisalign”, “Healthhub”, “CNA News”, using iOS

• MOF: FB + IG engagers in last 14 days

• BOF: Booking page visitors with no appointment

Result: 2.4x higher CTR and 48% reduction in CPL within the first month.

Mistakes We See (and Avoid)

• Using vague interests like “Fitness” or “Marketing”

• Skipping exclusions for converters (causes wasted overlap)

• Not splitting desktop vs mobile in B2B funnels

• Treating cold and warm traffic with the same creative

• Running lookalikes without cleansing the seed data

Meta rewards relevance. If your audience definition is lazy, your CPMs will reflect that.

Final Thoughts

Facebook Ads targeting is not guesswork. It’s not set-and-forget either. It's an ongoing optimisation loop of testing, refining, and adapting.

If you’re not inside Audience Insights weekly, auditing performance by segment, or using Custom Audiences to their full potential — you’re playing catch-up.