Your ad is more likely to perform better and continue running successfully if it is being displayed to the users who are most likely to be interested in your product or service. Because of this, we recommend targeting your ads to smaller, more specific groups of users at one time. This will also allow you to write ad text that is more personalized, making your ad more appealing to the users you are reaching.

As you select each targeting criterion, we will display the approximate number of users that your targeting encompasses. Please keep in mind that this estimate is not exact and that if you are not receiving as many clicks or impressions as you would like, it is possible that your targeting constraints are too restrictive. Please consider relaxing your targeting constraints if this is the case.

When you choose to check all the boxes next to certain targeting criteria (e.g. "Males" and "Females"), this means your ad will only be shown to users who have selected to fill in this information on their profile. If a user has chosen not to fill in this section of their profile, they will not see your ad.

If you do not check any of the boxes, your ad will be shown to any user, including those who have selected an option and those who have not filled in this section.

The second section of the targeting page will allow you to choose a more specific audience within the location that you have already specified. Your ad will only be eligible to show for users who meet the criteria that you select. Once you have chosen a country, all other targeting is optional. If you wish to target all users in the location you have selected, you do not need to fill out any of the other sections.

You can target each Facebook Ad to up to 25 countries. Your ad may be shown to users located in any of the countries you have selected. As you select additional countries, the estimated audience will update to show you approximately how many users your targeting includes.

If you choose to target more than one country, please note that you won't be able to refine your targeting to reach only specific cities. If you'd like to target certain cities, you're welcome to create multiple ads that each target a single country.

Facebook determines the location of a user based on IP (Internet Protocol) addresses, which can help identify the country or city where a user is physically located. If a user has listed a current address on their profile, they may see ads targeted to that location, regardless of where they are currently located. Ads are not targeted to a user's geographic networks or any other information.

Unfortunately, our targeting capability internationally is still somewhat limited. Cities may not be available in certain countries due to the small number of users in these locations. Cities will be made available as Facebook traffic in the area increases.

If you target your ads to a country that offers city-level targeting, you'll now see the option to include other cities within a selected radius. This will allow you to more easily target your ads to users in cities and surrounding suburbs without choosing them all individually.

Birthday targeting allows ads to be targeted to users on their birthdays. With this option advertisers can create highly relevant ads or highlight special offers available to users on their birthdays.

Please note that if you run an ad over a period of multiple days, the ad will be targeted to users whose birthday is the specific day when they are viewing the ad. For example, users with a January 1st birthday will see the ad on January 1, while users with a January 2nd birthday will see the ad the following day.

A user's age is determined by the year they included in their birthdate when registering for Facebook. This information will adhere to the user's privacy settings; all ad targeting is done automatically by our system, so your birthday will not be revealed directly to advertisers unless they're able to see your profile as a regular user on the site.

Keywords are based on interests, activities, and favorite books, TV shows, movies, or job titles that users list in their Facebook profiles. They may also come from the names of groups or Pages users belong to or are fans of. For example, if you choose to target the keyword "Dave Matthews Band," then your ad will only display on users’ accounts that have listed Dave Matthews Band in the "Favorite Music" section on their profile, or are members of a Dave Matthews Band group or Facebook Page.

As you select keywords to target your ads, we may automatically suggest up to three relevant keywords that you might want to try targeting as well.

In order to suggest new keywords for your ads, our system looks for the keywords that are most common among the users your targeting already encompasses. Adding these keywords to your targeting will help you increase the size of your potential audience while ensuring that you are still reaching users with relevant interests.

To select these schools by name, select either "College Grad" or "In College." Once one of these options has been chosen, two boxes will appear. In these boxes, you can type in the names of up to 20 schools and/or 20 majors.

When you choose to target your ads to users who are in college, you'll see the option to further refine your targeting by graduation year. Ads targeted to a specific graduation year may be shown to users who have listed that graduation year in their profiles. If you also target your ad to specific colleges, only users that are in the selected college network(s) and in that graduation year will be eligible to see your ad.

Connections targeting allows you to target your ads to users who have become a fan of your Page, a member of your Group, RSVP’d to your Event or authorized your Application. If you are the admin of a Page, Group, Event or Application, use the type-ahead to target your connections or exclude your connections from seeing your ad.

It's not currently possible to target users who have connections with Facebook content for which you are not an admin.

You can target your ad to current fans of your Page using Connections targeting. To do so, simply look for the "Connections: Target users who are connected to:" field in the ad targeting interface. As you begin to type the name of your Page in the field, the names of Pages and other eligible content you manage on Facebook will appear in the type-ahead. This targeting would be useful for advertisers trying to reach their current fans about things like special offers or new products, for example.
This targeting option can also be used to reach members of a Group you manage, or those who have RSVP’d to your Event or authorized your Application.

"Friends of connections" targeting allows you to target friends of your connections. Connections are fans of your Page, users who have RSVP’d Yes or Maybe to your Event, members of your Group, and users who have interacted with your Application.

In addition to harnessing the social graph by targeting your connections’ friends, every "Friends of connection" targeted ad promoting a Page or Event includes social content about a friend’s interaction with your business, amplifying the relevancy of your ad. Let’s take a look at an example. Annie is a fan of the Etsy Page. When Etsy wants to promote their Facebook Page, they can choose to target an ad to Annie’s friends by selecting the "Friends of connection" filter. Annie’s friends will receive the Etsy ad with the following sentence: "Annie Ta is a fan of this Page." Annie’s friends are naturally more interested because Annie’s interaction with Etsy is showcased directly in the ad.

To take advantage of this targeting capability, simply look for the "Friends of connections: Target users whose friends are connected to:" field in the ad targeting interface. As you begin to type the name of your Page, Application, Group or Event in the field, the names of eligible content that you manage on Facebook will appear in the type-ahead. You must be an admin of the Page, Application, Group or Event. It's not currently possible to target users who have connections with Facebook content for which you are not an admin.

The country I’d like to target isn’t available.

Unfortunately, our targeting capability internationally is still somewhat limited. Certain countries, regions, and cities may not yet be available to target your ads to due to the small number of users registered on those networks. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. These locations will be made available as soon as there is enough traffic to run ads on them.

The keyword I’d like to target isn’t available.

If the keyword you’d like to target is not currently available, then this means that not enough users have listed this word in their profile information. The keywords section only targets the information that users have listed in the activities, interests, favorite music, TV shows, movies, and books sections of their profiles. Once more users have listed this keyword on their profile, we will add it as an available targeting option.

I want to target a specific high school.

Facebook Ads are not currently available to be targeted to specific high school networks. However, you can still use ads to reach the high school population. To do so, please run your ads in the geographic network(s) in which the high school(s) you wish to reach are located. You can then target your ad by age, selecting the age range "13-18" in order to display your ad to the high school students in that region.

If you have an idea for how we can improve Facebook Ads for you, let us know by filling out this form.

Please note that we won't be able to respond to other inquiries submitted through that form, so if you have another question about Facebook or Facebook Ads, please return to the Help Center and contact us there.

If your question about Facebook Ad targeting wasn't answered by the FAQs above, you may want to check out other topics in the Facebook Ads Help Center that may answer your question. If you still aren't able to find the information you're looking for, you can fill out this form to contact the Facebook Ads Team.