Tapping into the world of Facebook Lookalike Audiences

Face­book looka­like audi­ences have proven to be a very effi­cient way to get addi­tion­al vol­ume for your Face­book cam­paigns, while mak­ing sure that you are tar­get­ing audi­ences which are sim­i­lar to your exist­ing user base.

Intro­duced in March 2013, Cus­tom Audi­ences could then only be cre­at­ed based on your own CRM data by upload­ing encrypt­ed tele­phone num­bers, e‑mail address­es or Face­book IDs of your cus­tomers or app users. With the intro­duc­tion of looka­like audi­ences, Face­book took the next step by find­ing users among its user base that shared sim­i­lar char­ac­ter­is­tics as your seed audi­ence, and cre­at­ing a new audi­ence which you could use for targeting.

While we at Adobe see a wide adop­tion and great returns for clients using Cus­tom Audi­ences and looka­like audi­ences from CRM data, Face­book has con­tin­ued to work on new fea­tures to fur­ther expand its looka­like audi­ences offering.

With its lat­est update to looka­like audi­ences, Face­book now offers new ways for adver­tis­ers to tap into the world of looka­like audi­ences with­out hav­ing to upload their own CRM data.

You are now able to auto­mat­i­cal­ly build out looka­like audi­ences based on your exist­ing Face­book fans, your mobile app users or users that have vis­it­ed or con­vert­ed on your website.

How to create lookalike audiences

1. Looka­like audi­ences from your Face­book Fans

Sim­ply select your Fan page as a seed source to cre­ate a looka­like audi­ence which con­sists of peo­ple that are sim­i­lar to your exist­ing fan base.

2. Looka­like audi­ences from your mobile app users

When you have the Face­book SDK inte­grat­ed into your mobile app you can already cre­ate Cus­tom Audi­ences from users that have com­plet­ed a cer­tain action with­in your app. It’s now also pos­si­ble to build looka­like audi­ences based on those users and find peo­ple sim­i­lar to your exist­ing mobile app users

3. Looka­like audi­ences from your web­site visitors

Face­book recent­ly intro­duced Web­site Cus­tom Audi­ences where you can imple­ment a Face­book tag through­out your web­site and auto­mat­i­cal­ly build out Cus­tom Audi­ences with peo­ple that have vis­it­ed cer­tain areas of your web­site. In com­bi­na­tion with the Face­book con­ver­sion pix­el on your check­out page, you can now fur­ther expand your reach by cre­at­ing looka­like audi­ences from users that have engaged or even con­vert­ed on your website.

While these updates are already great news for adver­tis­ers, anoth­er ben­e­fit lies in the dynam­ic for­mat of looka­like audi­ences. Where before you had to con­stant­ly upload new CRM data and cre­ate new looka­like audi­ences to keep your audi­ences up to date, looka­like audi­ences now auto­mat­i­cal­ly update when their seed audi­ence changes. So as your num­ber of fans, mobile app users or web­site vis­i­tors increas­es, your looka­like audi­ences will con­tin­u­ous­ly update, mak­ing sure you are always tar­get­ing users which are sim­i­lar to your seed audience.

How to get started

To get up and run­ning with looka­like audi­ences, fol­low these three sim­ple steps:

1. Imple­ment the Face­book web­site audi­ences and Face­book con­ver­sion pix­el on your web­site and use the Face­book SDK for your mobile app
2. Define rel­e­vant seed audi­ences to build your looka­like audi­ences from. For exam­ple only fire the web­site audi­ence tag, if a user has been on your web­site for at least 30 sec­onds, mak­ing sure that you are only cap­tur­ing high­ly engaged users (this rule can eas­i­ly be imple­ment­ed with Adobe Tag Man­ag­er, part of Adobe Mar­ket­ing Cloud)
3. Over­lay your looka­like tar­get­ing with addi­tion­al Face­book tar­get­ing options like gen­der, age and inter­ests to fur­ther tai­lor your ads to rel­e­vant audiences.

The new looka­like audi­ences fea­tures are a great addi­tion to tra­di­tion­al looka­like audi­ences and Cus­tom Audi­ences and a good way for adver­tis­ers to lever­age one of Facebook’s strongest tar­get­ing for­mat while not hav­ing to use CRM data.

To take part in the con­ver­sa­tion, fol­low us on Twit­ter, @AdobeAds.