If you have a certain targeting combination that works great with your ads, you might want to create a lookalike audience for targeting in other campaigns.

We recently launched a Facebook Lookalikes feature in the platform which allows you to create and manage lookalike audiences and use them to target people similar to your customers.

In addition, we've taken further steps and introduced some extra functionality which is not available in Facebook Audience Manager and can be created only through Facebook's API. This feature allows you to create lookalikes in bulk using multiple sources and locations, extend audience size up to 20% (Facebook only allows 10%), and most excitingly — leverage Ad Set Based Conversion Lookalikes to continuously generate lookalikes from high-performing Ad Sets.

What is a Lookalike Audience?

Lookalike audiences allow you to reach new people who are similar to your most valuable customers and are therefore more likely to be interested in your company.

Facebook allows you to create lookalike audiences from a single conversion event using Page Audience, Mobile App, Facebook Shops Product Catalog as a source.

For example, using Facebook Pixel allows Facebook to update your seed audience automatically and specify the exact event you count as a conversion (ex. purchase, event registration, subscription).

You can also create a lookalike audience out of custom audiences and upload your database of customers that is not based on your pixel data, mobile app data, or Page fans information.

Once you create a Lookalike Audience based on one of the sources and use it as a seed audience, Facebook will find people with similar demographics and interests and use them as a target audience.

Ad Set Based Conversion Lookalikes

ABC Lookalikes is a Facebook API only feature supported by Revealbot that allows you to use Campaigns and Ad Sets as a seed and dynamically update once you get new conversions.

Instead of using a single conversion event, you can continuously generate lookalikes from high-performing Ad Sets.

With the new ABC Lookalikes, you can put your ads into a self-improving loop and use converted customers of your current campaign to improve itself — once these Campaigns or Ad Sets get newer converters, the Lookalike Audience expands itself.

Cory Dobbin spent roughly $120,000 testing the new ABC Lookalike Audiences in partnership with Facebook and posted the results in this tweet:

Facebook's new(ish) ABC Lookalike audiences are 🔥

Over the last 30 days, I spent ~$120,000 testing the new ABC Lookalike audiences in partnership with FB, and the performance coming out of them was solid. Results below:

1/13

— Cory Dobbin 🙇 (@CoryDobbin) July 7, 2020

Creating ABC Lookalike Audiences

Here are the instructions. The process is quite simple but you'll need to have some active or paused ads your audience will be based on.

You'll find Lookalikes in the Assets section.

If you already have some Lookalike Audiences created in Facebook Audience Manager, they will show up here. Keep in mind, that deleting lookalikes in Revealbot will also remove them from Facebook Manager.

The algorithm is pretty similar to creating event-based lookalikes but instead of events, here you use Campaigns and Ad Sets.

Create new Lookalike Audience and select ABC Lookalikes option.

1. Select Source. Specify the source — any relevant well-performing Campaign/Ad Set — to find people that will more likely interact with your business. Specify one or multiple Campaigns or use nested Ad Sets you want to create your lookalike from. You can use both active and paused items.
2. Select Location. You'll need at least 100 people in your customer group in order for Facebook to create a lookalike audience.
3. Select Audience Size. Here you choose between similarity and reach — using broader audience increases the reach but decreases the similarity.

Once everything is set up, click Create. You're done! It could take up to 24 hours for your lookalike to be created as it takes time for Facebook to find people that are similar to your source audience.

And that's it!

Tips on leveraging Lookalike Audiences

Seed Audience Size

You'll need at least 100 people in your customer group in order for Facebook to create a lookalike audience, but it's a good call to include more — this will create a more accurate picture of your audience. The bigger your seed audience, the higher-quality lookalike you get.

Still, Facebook recommends keeping your seed audience size under 10.000 people to avoid pattern degradation.

Similarity/Reach balance

It is a good call to start with 1% to find the most relevant audience and adjust the balance building higher percentage audiences as you get good results. This balance is quite individual so you'll have to find the best one for your business.

AB test your Ads

Since there's no secret formula on how to find the right targeting combination, you can AB test your Ads in order to find best-performing audience segments you can build ABC Lookalikes from.

I strongly believe that utilizing Lookalike Audiences is a must, this could definitely become a pillar of your targeting strategy. We're going to continuously provide our customers with new solutions that will help them manage their ads in a smart way. That's why I need your feedback and feature requests — feel free to reach out to me via andrey@bir.ch so we can collaborate on this together.

Join our Ads Automation Community to ask your questions and discuss lookalikes or any other related topic with fellow marketers and advertisers.