Using Targeting Filters in Facebook Advertising

By Paul Dunay, Richard Krueger, and Joel Elad

Part of the Facebook Advertising For Dummies Cheat Sheet

Ensure that your Facebook ad is being shown to the right target audience. Facebook Advertising offers a variety of targeting filters you can use to make sure that only the people who match your criteria will be shown your ad.

Here are the targeting filters available in Facebook Ads.

Gender: Restrict your ads to a male audience, female audience, or both.
Age: Pick one or more age ranges of people to target with your ad: 13–17, 18–24, 25–34, 35–44, 45–54, 55–64, and 65–100. Those users who haven't defined their age within Facebook won't see your ad if you use an age-range filter.
Birthday: Display your ad to people on their birthday, probably to make them a special birthday offer if they click your ad.
Location: Set specific countries (where Facebook users live) as eligible to view your ad. In certain countries (such as the United States), you can specify specific states and in some cases, a specific city (or cities) where your ad is eligible to be shown. These criteria are very helpful for local businesses, for example.
Likes and Interests: Enter keywords that represent a user's potential Likes or Interests (such as a Book, Movie, Television Show, title of a piece of music, or hobby or interest) that users enter into their Facebook Profile. If the user has that keyword(s) in a Profile that match the keywords you provide in this targeting filter, that user is eligible to see your ad.
Interested In: Target people who state they are "Interested in" Men or Women, or you can pick All. A Facebook user who didn't select this in a Profile is ineligible to view your ad if you use this filter.
Relationship: Target a user based on Relationship status in a Profile. Options include Single, In a Relationship, Engaged, or Married. This filter can be helpful, for example, to target Engaged people with wedding products and offers.
Language: Target a user based on the Language(s) set in a Profile.
Education: Target a user based on the Education level in a Profile. Options include In High School, In College, or College Grad.
Workplaces: Target a user based on the company listed as Employer. For the user to see your ad, the spelling of the Employer name must the spelling that you provide.
Connections: Target users already connected to a specific Facebook Page, Event, Group, or application.
Friends of Connections: Target Facebook users who are not only connected to your Facebook business Page but also have at least one Friend connected to your business Page. This way, if you use this filter, the ad indicates which Friend is already connected to your Page.