Core Audience
Also known as: Saved Audience, Interest Targeting
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.
What it actually means
Core audiences are defined entirely from the data Meta collects across its platforms. You assemble them by selecting a location, an age and gender range, and optionally layering interests (such as 'home improvement') and behaviors (such as 'recently moved'). They are the starting point for prospecting — reaching new people who have never heard of you. The trade-off is precision versus scale: narrow interest stacks feel targeted but can be small and expensive, while broad core audiences give Meta's algorithm room to find buyers. For many accounts today, a simple broad core audience plus strong creative outperforms heavily layered interest targeting.
For a local shop, the most important core-audience setting is location: a tight radius keeps you from paying to reach people who will never drive to you.
Related terms
An audience is the defined group of people your ads are eligible to reach, built from location, demographics, interests, behaviors, or your own data.
Interest targeting reaches people based on topics, pages, and activities Meta has associated with them, such as 'yoga' or 'small business owners'.
A lookalike audience is a group Meta builds to resemble an existing source audience, finding new people who share traits with your best customers.
Geotargeting restricts your ads to people in specific locations — a country, city, ZIP code, or a radius around an address.
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