Lookalike Audiences are a way to reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they're similar to customers you care about.

You can base your Lookalike Audience on a variety of sources (ex: people who like your Page, or visited your website).

Note: Your Lookalike Audience can only include people from one country at a time.

Lookalike Audiences can be used to support advertising objectives that involve targeting ads to people who are similar to your source audience. For example:

• You can target people who are similar to your existing customers
• You can drive more traffic to your website by targeting people who are similar to those who have visited your website
• You can increase adoption of your mobile app by targeting people who are similar to your existing mobile app users
• You can expand to new markets by targeting people in other countries that are similar to your current customers

We look at the common qualities of the people in your source audience (ex: demographics and interests) and then find the people who “look like” your source audience in the country you choose.

You can choose the size of the Lookalike Audience during the creation process. Smaller audiences more closely match your source audience. Creating a larger audience increases your potential reach, but reduces the level of similarity to your source audience.

Notes:

• Your Lookalike Audience will only include people from the country you specify
• Your source audience must contain at least 100 people from a single country in order for us to use it as the basis for a Lookalike Audience
• You don't have to have anyone from the country you want to target in your source. For example, if you have a source audience of 10,000 people from Finland, you can use that to create a Lookalike Audience of similar people in South Africa.

Your Lookalike Audience will be ready to use 6-24 hours after you create it.

Note:

• Lookalike Audiences update automatically when you make changes to the source audiences they are based on as long as you're still actively targeting ads to that audience. These updates take 3-7 days.
• You don’t need to wait for your Lookalike Audience to update to use it for ad targeting.
• You can see when your Lookalike Audience was updated by visiting your Audience Manager page and looking at the date under the Availability column.

Yes, you can use any Facebook targeting options to narrow down your Custom Audience or Lookalike Audience, including additional geographic targeting, demographic targeting or interest targeting.

Note: We recommend that you don't use too much additional targeting because it will affect the audience size for your ad.

Yes, you can use multiple Lookalike Audiences on a single ad set. The ad set will target your ads to people who are in any selected Lookalike Audience.

When you create an ad, you can choose to target it to people in any Custom Audiences and/or Lookalike Audiences you've created.

You can also use exclusion targeting, which prevents a particular audience from seeing the ad. For example, you can exclude an audience of your current customers if you're running a campaign to gain new customers.

To use Custom Audiences and/or Lookalike Audiences for targeting:

1. Create an Ad
2. Under Who do you want your ads to reach?, click the text box for Custom Audiences
3. Select Include or Exclude, depending on how you'd like to target your ad

4. Select the Custom Audiences and/or Lookalike Audiences you want to use

Note: You can combine multiple Custom Audiences and/or Lookalike Audiences to refine your targeting.

5. Finish setting up the ad and click Place Order

You can create a Lookalike Audience in Ads Manager or Power Editor.

To create a Lookalike Audience in Ads Manager:

1. Go to your Audiences
2. Click Create Audiences in the top left and then select Create a Lookalike Audience from the dropdown
3. Choose your source (any Custom Audience - including those based on an app, conversion pixel or Facebook Page)
4. Choose the country where you'd like to find a similar set of people
5. Choose your desired audience size with the slider
6. Click Create Audience

To create a Lookalike Audience from Power Editor:

1. Go to your Audiences
2. Click Create Audience at the top-right of the page and select Lookalike Audiences from the dropdown
3. Choose your source (any Custom Audience - including those based on an app, conversion pixel or Facebook Page)
4. Choose the country where you'd like to find a similar set of people
5. Choose your desired audience size with the slider
6. Click Create Audience

Note: It may take 6 to 24 hours for your Lookalike Audience to be created. After that, it'll refresh every 3 to 7 days as long as you're still actively targeting ads to that audience.

Learn more about Lookalike Audiences.

To create a Lookalike Audience and adjust its size:

1. Go to your Audiences
2. In the top left, click Create Audience > Lookalike Audience
3. Select your source and country
4. Adjust the slider to choose the size of your Lookalike Audience


Note: The size range is based on the total audience in the country you choose.

5. Click Create Audience

Your country choice determines where the people in your Lookalike Audience are based. You upload your source and choose your country. Then we find the people in the country you chose who are similar to those in your source.

Notes:

• In order for us to be able to use your source as the basis of a Lookalike Audience, it must contain at least 100 people from a single country.
• You don't have to have anyone from the country you want to target in your source. For example, if you have a source audience of 10,000 people from Finland, you can use that to create a Lookalike Audience of similar people in South Africa.

No, a Lookalike Audience can't be used to target organic Page posts. A Lookalike Audience can only be used to target ads.

Yes, you can use any Facebook targeting options to narrow down your Custom Audience or Lookalike Audience, including additional geographic targeting, demographic targeting or interest targeting.

Note: We recommend that you don't use too much additional targeting because it will affect the audience size for your ad.

You can create a set of lookalike audiences using Ads Manager or Power Editor. This allows you to bid differently for audiences with different conversion values.

The audiences you create are non-overlapping, so you don't have to exclude other audiences that are more or less similar. In this example, three audiences are created:

• The most similar audience (0%-1%)
• The second most similar audience (1%-3%)
• The least similar audience (3%-6%)

To create a set of lookalike audiences in Ads Manager:

1. Go to Ads Manager
2. Click Tools > Audiences
3. Click Create Audience > Lookalike Audience
4. Click Show Advanced Options
5. Choose a source and country for your audience
6. Choose the number of audiences you want to create
7. Adjust the sliders to choose how similar you want your audiences to be to your source.
8. Click Confirm

To create a set of lookalike audiences in Power Editor:

1. Go to your Audiences
2. Click Create Audience > Lookalike Audience
3. Click Show Advanced Options
4. Choose a source and country for your audience
5. Choose the number of audiences you want to create
6. Adjust the sliders to choose how similar you want your audiences to be to your source.
7. Click Confirm

Tips for getting the most out of your lookalike audiences

Once you've created a set of lookalike audiences using the advanced options, get the most out of them with this approach:

1. Target the same ads to each of the lookalike audiences with initial bids
2. See how well the ads perform based on revenue per conversion or lifetime value of people in each audience
Note: Generally, lookalike audiences more similar to their source audience are more valuable. However, this could vary based on the quality of the source audience and the nature of the target audience.
3. Modify your bids for each audience based on your findings (bid more for more valuable audiences and less for less valuable audiences)

To create a Lookalike Audience, you have to select the source you want it to look like. Here are some best practices to choose the most effective source:

1. Find your most valuable customers:
   • First, identify a core group of your best customers based on lifetime value, transaction value, total order size or engagement.
   • Then, create Custom Audiences for each segment. You will use these Custom Audiences as the sources for your Lookalike Audiences.

     Important: For most advertisers, Website Custom Audiences and Mobile App Custom Audiences are too big and too general to be effective Lookalike Audience sources.

     However, they can work in some cases, particularly when the audience is constrained to people that have completed a purchase.
2. Determine what source size is ideal:
   • The optimal source is 10,000 to 50,000 people.

     Note: Lookalike Audience performance declines when it's based on a source of over 50,000 people.
   • However, the most important aspect of a source is that it is made up of high value customers. Even sources of 1,000 to 5,000 people can work well under certain conditions.

To create a Lookalike Audience, you must be the admin of the Page or conversion pixel you're creating it from. If you're creating a Lookalike Audience from a Custom Audience, you must be the creator of that Custom Audience. If you're creating a Lookalike Audience from mobile app installs data, you must be an Administrator or Developer role on the app.

Yes, people in your source audience will be excluded from your Lookalike Audience. However, if you create a Lookalike Audience using a conversion pixel as your source, those people won't be excluded.

Lookalike Audiences can be built from Custom Audiences, conversion pixels, install data from your mobile apps or from fans of your Facebook Page.

Note: You can't create a Lookalike Audience based on a Custom Audience created by a Data Partner.

The source audience your Lookalike Audience is based on should include at least 100 people. A larger source audience helps Facebook find more people who are more similar to it.

You can create 500 Lookalike Audiences off of one source audience.

Lookalike audiences will automatically update every 3-7 days to reflect changes to your source audience.