How to Create a Meta Ads Special Ad Category Audience

This feature is only applicable to Special Ad Category in Meta Ads campaigns.

The Meta Ads Special Ad Category  refers to campaigns that seek to promote credit card offers, loans, housing, or employment. 

A Special Ad Audience  , similar to a lookalike audience, uses online behavioral trends and similarities from people selected in your source (explained in detail later) to create new audience sets for you. 

Targeting Rules and Restrictions under Special Ad Audiences:

1. Locations
   • Target ads based on geographic location (country, city, region, state, etc.) but NOT by ZIP codes.
   • By default, you will target within a 15-mile radius of the selected option.

2. Age & Gender

   • Audience sets always include people aged 18 up to 65.
   • Audience sets always include all genders.
   • These options cannot be edited.

3. Detailed Targeting

   •  A few demographic, behavior, and interest options are unavailable.
   • xcluding any detailed targeting options is restricted.

Instructions

1. Create a new Audience Segment.
   •  
   • From your XPO Admin Dashboard, click Audience in the menu bar.
   • Click on +Audience. In the New Audience form, enter your Audience Segment Name.
   • Next, select Meta Ads as your Audience Type. Select Social as your source with Special Ad Audience.
   • Type in the name of the audience segment and link the Facebook Ad Account that will be used to create this audience segment.
     
     

     

     
     

2. Select the Source. Create this audience by using online behavioral trends and similarities from people selected in your source.
   • The type of sources includes (a) Custom Audience and (b) Page.
   • The selected source reflects your existing and most valuable customers, thereby helping you reach a similar audience base.

   

   
   2(a) Custom Audience

   You can select ONE of the dropdown list as your source. The list is your existing audiences created under the selected Facebook Account in XPO.

   

   Custom Audiences include saved Facebook App Activity Audiences, Website Traffic, Engagement, Event Audiences (also known as Claim Audiences), and CRM based Facebook Audiences. 

   2(b) Page

   • Select ONE Facebook Page as the source of your new special ad audience segment.
   • The dropdown list will only populate Facebook pages linked to the XPO Account.

   

3. Select Audience Location.

   Based on your entered location(s) and source, you will be creating new special ad audience set(s) from these locations, and prospects who are similar to the sources' behaviors from here.

   

4. Select Audience Size.

   • Here, you can create 1 or more audience sets, up to a maximum of 6 sets.
   • The percentage indicates the similarity to your source; the bigger the percentage, the less similar it is to the source. Increasing the percentage also creates a broader audience size, with a less similar audience set and vice versa.
     For instance, 1% lookalike means people who are most similar to your source but with a smaller audience size whereas 10% means less similar but broader audience size.

   

   • The feature allows you to categorize the pool of audience sets differently.
   • For example, the below image indicates 3 Special Ad Audience sets:
     • 'A' is to create an audience at 4% which is the closest to the source. The target audience size will be smaller as the system needs to capture the niche audience characteristics at 4%.
     • 'B' is an audience at 7% which means the audience will not be as similar compared to A which is at 4% similarity to the source. For B, since the percentage is higher, the audience size will be broader compared to A.
     • 'C' is an audience at 10% where the audience size is the broadest, but with the least number of similarities to the source compared to A and B.
       
       In short, an increase or decrease in the percentage affects the level of similarities and target size of the special ad audience. The higher the percentage, the less similar but a broader audience size.

   

Click Save.

Your saved audience set will be available on the audience dashboard to link with a Facebook Special Ad Category Campaign. 

• Once saved, you won't be able to change any other information except the name of the audience. 
• Special Ad Audience is specific and can only be linked to Facebook Special Ad Category Campaign.
• You can clone these audiences.
• You can sync/allocate special ad audiences from your Facebook Account into XPO.