About lookalike audiences

A lookalike audience is a way your ads can reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they share similar characteristics to your existing customers.

A lookalike audience uses an existing custom audience you select for its source audience. To create a lookalike audience, our system leverages information such as demographics, interests and behaviours from your source audience to find new people who share similar qualities. When you use a lookalike audience, your ad is delivered to that audience of people who are similar to (or "look like") your existing customers.

When you create your lookalike audience, you can use a percentage range to choose how closely you want your new audience to match your source audience. The size you choose depends on your goals. Smaller percentages more closely match your source audience, but larger percentages create a bigger, broader audience.

We generally recommend a source audience that has between 1,000 and 5,000 people. However, the quality of your audience also matters. For example, you may get better results depending on your goals if you use an audience made from your best customers rather than one that includes all of your customers.

• You need an existing source audience before you can create a lookalike audience.
• You can create up to 500 lookalike audiences from a single source audience.
• Your source audience must contain at least 100 people from a single country to use it as the basis for a lookalike audience.
• Lookalike audiences require you to select a location.
• You can use lookalike expansion to show your ads to people outside your defined lookalike audience.
• People in your source audience are excluded from your lookalike audience.
• You can use multiple lookalike audiences at the same time for a single ad set. In this instance, the ad set targets your ads to people in any of your selected lookalike audiences.

Note: Targeting options are limited for audiences that include people under the age of 18 in most countries, under 20 in Thailand and under 21 in Indonesia. Learn more about targeting options to reach teens and how this update may affect your ad sets.

• Create a lookalike audience
• Best practices to maximise your lookalike audience