Audience
An audience is the defined group of people your ads are eligible to reach, built from location, demographics, interests, behaviors, or your own data.
What it actually means
An audience is the targeting definition that tells Meta who should be considered for your ads. Audiences come in three broad types: core audiences built from Meta's location, demographic, and interest data; custom audiences built from your own lists and website visitors; and lookalike audiences modeled to resemble a source group. The size and quality of your audience shape everything downstream — too narrow and you exhaust it quickly with rising frequency, too broad and your budget waters down across people unlikely to buy. Modern Meta campaigns increasingly favor broad audiences and let the algorithm find buyers, but the right approach depends on your offer and budget.
Local businesses almost always start with a tight geographic audience — a radius around the storefront — then layer on the demographics of their best customers.
Related terms
A core audience is a targeting group built from Meta's own data — location, age, gender, interests, and behaviors — rather than from your customer lists.
A custom audience is a targeting group built from your own data, such as a customer email list, website visitors, or people who engaged with your content.
A lookalike audience is a group Meta builds to resemble an existing source audience, finding new people who share traits with your best customers.
Retargeting is showing ads to people who have already interacted with your business — visited your site, watched a video, or engaged with your page.
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