How to Create a Facebook Ad Set

You have to create an Ad Set in order to target a specific audience. You can group multiples ads within an Ad Set. Similarly, you can manage multiple Ad Sets within the same Facebook campaign – so long as you want each Ad Set to share the same campaign objective.

Audience

There are 6 sections that can be defined when creating an Audience: location, age, gender, language, detailed targeting, and connections. You don’t have to define them all; just keep in the mind the more that you define, the more targeted your ads will be.

Location: You can set your location targeting by country, state, region, city, or zip code. You can set your location targeting to either include or exclude: everyone in this location, people who live in this location, people recently in this location, or people traveling in this location. You can also limit city targeting to a 10 – 50 mile radius.

Additionally, you can target areas surrounding specific areas. To do this, you will need to include the greater area and exclude a smaller radius within it.

Age: You can target customers, ages 13 – 65+. You can define a range of ages (ex. 13 – 18), or people of a specific age (ex. 24 – 24).

Gender: You can choose to target only men, only women, or everyone.

Language: You should only use language targeting if the customers you want to target do not speak the language common or local to your location. For example, if you are trying to reach Spanish-speaking customers in a predominantly English-speaking area, you will want to set language targeting to Spanish.

Facebook’s language targeting options are extremely extensive. Just search for the language your target customers speak to select it.

Detailed Targeting: This is where you define your audience demographics, interest, and behaviors. The full list of detailed targeting options is ridiculously long, but they’re all listed out in a Vertical Rail Knowledge Base post.

You can use demographics, interests, and behaviors to narrow your audience. You can also narrow your targeting by applying advanced combinations: including people who match at least ONE of the following AND MUST ALSO match at least ONE of the following, and excluding people who match at least ONE of the following. You can apply inclusions and exclusions together.

Connections: You can target people who are connected to your Facebook page, app, or events. Targeting options include:

• People who like your page
• Friends of people who like your page
• Exclude people who like your page
• People who used your app
• Friends of people who used your app
• Exclude people who used your app
• People who responded to your event
• Friends of people who responded to your event
• Exclude people who already responded to your event

You can also set an advanced combination of these options (i.e. targeting people who like your page, but exclude people who have used your app).

Budget & Schedule

There are 7 sections to be defined when setting the Budget & Schedule for your Ad Set: budget, schedule, optimization for ad delivery, bid amount, when you get charged, ad schedule, and delivery type.

Budget: This is where you set either the Daily Budget or Lifetime Budget for your Ad Set. To set a Lifetime Budget, you must set a Start and End date.

Schedule: You can either set your Ad Set to run continuously, or you can set a Start and End date.

Optimization for Ad Delivery: This is somewhat specific to the campaign type and objective you’ve chosen, because each campaign type has its own optimized ad delivery options:

• Boost Your Posts: Post Engagement, Impressions, or Daily Unique Reach
• Promote Your Page: Page Likes
• Send People to Your Website: Link Clicks to Your Website, Impressions, or Daily Unique Reach
• Increase Conversions on Your Website: Conversions, Impressions, Link Clicks to Your Website, or Daily Unique Reach
• Get Installs of Your App: App Installs, Impressions, or Daily Unique Reach
• Increase Engagement in Your App: Engagement
• Reach People Near Your Business: Radius Targeting Around Your Business
• Raise Attendance at Your Event: Event Response, Impressions, Post Engagement, or Daily Unique Reach
• Get People to Claim Your Offer: Offer Claims, Impressions, or Daily Unique Reach
• Get Video Views: Video Views or Daily Unique Reach
• Collect Leads for Your Business: Leads or Link Clicks
• Increase Brand Awareness: Brand Awareness or Reach

Bid Amount: You can set the bid amount to either Automatic or Manual. With an Automatic bid amount, you trust Facebook to set the best bid amount to achieve your ad delivery goals. With a Manual bid amount, you set your own max CPM or CPC bid.

When You Get Charged: You can choose a CPM (cost-per-thousand-impressions) or CPC (cost-per-click) bidding strategy.

Ad Scheduling: Ad scheduling only works with Lifetime budgets. Your ads will be scheduled to run during the days and the hours of your choosing, in your audience’s time zone.

Delivery Type: You can either set your ads to be delivered at a Standard or Accelerated rate. Standard will deliver your ads consistently, while Accelerated will cause your ads to show more quickly until you run out of your set budget.