My experience with ads segmentation on Facebook

Ads segmentation can be one of the biggest headaches we can have in Facebooks, segmentation is such a powerful tool, but mastering it is a difficult process, that can only be acchieved with experience.

Ive been working as an ad manager for a while, this are some of the tricks im using to improve the segmentation on my FB ads.


Segmentation with only 1 box or circle with condition or

When I only work with a box and I put there several interests, they all come together with the or condition. I want to reach, for example, people interested in green tea, infusions, black tea, etc. It is important that you do not start mixing concepts. What does this mean?

It is in fact a fairly common mistake among those who start with Facebook Ads. They usually put all kinds of interest in the same part, with the aim of increasing the reach. It is not really about getting more people, but more interested. This generally means reducing the audience and not increasing it.


Maybe this even gives me results how bad is that then I can not differentiate. How will you know if the sales generated you have entered because you have addressed competitors or lovers of teas in general?

If I work only on a circle, it is very important that interests are not dirty. What does this mean? I should not choose interests that are too broad or generic. The bad thing is that even those who are more specific can not be that good.

The reason behind is that Facebook associates many things like interest. There could be people within that group who simply liked content related to that topic.

You have to dig deeper. Interests related to other pages of Facebook type magazines, clubs, associations, etc. Are much better because behind there is a much higher concentration of potential buyers that is what we are looking for. Do you understand, right? Segmenting with only one circle you have to be very demanding when it comes to choosing the interests. It does not serve anything.

Segmentation with condition and combining different types of interests

In this case I use a detailed segmentation. That is, I combine two or three circles to achieve a combination of Y.

E.g. You could look for a profile of people who like personalized gifts, are in a relationship and also have anniversary in less than 30 days. In this example we would create these 3 conditions with 3 different circles.

Here again it is important that the interests that we are grouping in each circle are similar. When more and combinations are created, the more accurate our audience is. This still does not guarantee anything because there is always the possibility that you are trying to sell someone (who you are arriving in a hyper-precise) that is not willing to buy.

This would be the ideal constellation that unfortunately only rarely encountered. Either each circle is not large enough or the remaining mass does not give to make a campaign because it is too small. Most of the time we have to opt for the next option.

Detailed targeting through broader interests

Many interests as mentioned previously do not serve because they are inaccurate. They attract an interested but not passionate user and for anything potential buyer of our offer. Luckily the detailed segmentation combining different conditions allows us to perform a kind of cleaning.

There are a lot of other things I could mention in this post for improving your ads, like using Canvas, customized audiences or FB pixel, but I dont want to make it too long.

Please let me know what you think about my segmentation techniques, it would be very nice if we could share some experiences working with segmentations!