Creating & Managing Audiences in Bïrch

Targeting the right audience is the foundation of every successful Meta campaign, and Birch brings all the key audience tools together in one place to make targeting simple and strategic. Let’s look at the three main audience types you can create: Saved, Custom, and Lookalike.

Saved Audience

This category includes two options: Advantage+ audience and Regular audience.

Advantage+ audience

The Advantage+ Audience allows you to leverage Meta’s AI to find your campaign audience using machine learning and signals such as Pixel or Conversions API data, engagement data from your pages, and first-party data you upload. Meta’s AI continuously uses this information to identify your ideal audience, evolving and optimizing as it learns.

When to use this type of audience

• When your pixel already tracks conversions and Meta understands your best customers. Advantage+ can outperform manual targeting by uncovering similar high-probability users you might otherwise miss.
• When entering a new market with similar products. The algorithm can use your pixel’s history to predict buyers in new geographic locations.

To create an Advantage+ audience go to Audiences → New Audience → Advantage+. Select your ad account, include or exclude locations, set a minimum age, exclude custom audiences if necessary, select languages, and add optional targeting recommendations to improve delivery.

Meta will handle the rest - expanding targeting when it can improve performance.

Regular Audience

Regular Audience or a manually defined audience. Unlike Advantage+ Audiences, it doesn’t leverage Meta’s delivery optimization algorithms and follows only the settings you specify. Despite automation being available, Saved Audiences are still highly valuable when used strategically to guide the algorithm effectively.

When to use this type of audience

• When your pixel is new or has limited data. In this case, Saved Audiences provide the algorithm with a clear starting point.
• When targeting a niche or specialized audience. Manual targeting will ensure your budget reaches qualified users before the algorithm expands too broadly.
• When testing audience hypotheses or segmentation. Manual audiences let you control variables and learn which personas or messaging perform best.

To create an Regular Audience audience go to Audiences → New Audience → Regular audience. Name your audience and select the associated ad account. You’ll see a list of existing Custom and Lookalike Audiences linked to that account. Next, define your locations, age range, and gender. You can include or exclude specific locations. Under Detailed Targeting, refine your audience by adding demographics, interests, and behaviors.

To expand your reach, enable Advantage Detailed Targeting, which allows the algorithm to show your ads to additional people likely to generate better results. Select languages and click Save. Your audience will be ready for use in Birch features such as Creative Testing, Bulk Creation, or Post Boosting.

Whether you’re boosting posts or creating ads, Birch allows you to use your Saved Audiences from both Meta and Birch. If you can’t find an existing audience created on Meta, ensure it has been added to your Saved Audiences list.

Custom Audience

Second option is a Custom Audience, ideal for retargeting. Your ads will be shown to people who have already interacted with your brand — such as those who visited your website, added items to their cart, or made past purchases. It’s also effective for re-engaging previous customers with new products or building high-performing Lookalike Audiences.

To create a Custom Audience prepare a Google Sheet with identifiers (such as email addresses or phone numbers) for your existing customers. Meta will match these identifiers with user profiles. For best match rates, include as many identifiers as possible while following our formatting guidelines.You can also use Google Sheet template linked in the video description.

Navigate to Audience → Custom Audience → +Create Custom Audience. Click Connect, paste the public share link, and select the sheet you want to use. After clicking Continue, identifiers will be mapped automatically — but you can adjust them manually from the dropdown if needed. Ensure each identifier type is set only once. When your list is ready, click Connect, then Create.

The Sync option is enabled by default. When active, your Custom Audience will update automatically whenever new customer data is added to the Google Sheet.

Lookalike Audience

Lastly, there’s the Lookalike Audience, one of Meta’s most strategic tools. It bridges the gap between manual control (Saved Audiences) and AI-driven automation (Advantage+).

A Lookalike Audience uses a Source Audience (for example, a Custom Audience or high-performing Ad Set) to find new people who resemble your best converters based on Meta’s internal data — including behaviors, interests, demographics, and purchase intent. The quality of your source determines the quality of your Lookalike.

When to use this type of audience

• When you have a strong, high-quality seed audience. Lookalikes work best when your source audience represents your most profitable customers and is based on high-value actions such as purchases, email sign-ups, or checkout initiations.
• When you’re ready to scale. Instead of manually guessing interests, Lookalike Audiences intelligently expand your reach while maintaining relevance.

To create a Lookalike audience go to Audiences → Lookalikes → New Lookalike. Select an existing source or an Ad Set-based Lookalike. For the latter, choose a well-performing campaign or ad set to help Meta find people more likely to interact with your business.

Select your target Locations, Audience Size, and Name, then click Create. It may take up to 24 hours for your Lookalike Audience to be created, as Meta needs time to identify people similar to your source.

Note that to use a Custom or Lookalike Audience within Bïrch features, you’ll first need to create a Saved Audience based on it.

With so many powerful audience types available in Birch, you can combine precision and automation to create campaigns that truly perform. Which of these audiences are you using today and have you explored the potential of Advantage+ audiences yet? Let us know in the comments and see you in the next video.