+3 votes
by (210 points)
If you select the Conversion objective, what percentage of the Facebook audience you are targeting might you reasonably expect to see your ads? Say you have an audience of 1, 000, 000 interested in chocolate. How many people Facebook views as being ‘likely to convert' might you expect to see your ads? 1%? 25% 50%? I understand this will vary a lot in practice depending on a number of different factors but can anyone share what a sensible reach to expect might be, of an audience you're targeting, if you choose a Conversion objective? Thanks in advance!  
If you select the Conversion objective, what percentage of the Facebook audience you are targeting m

2 Answers

+3 votes
by (8.4k points)
 
Best answer
Facebook flags a person as likely to convert if they exhibit buying signals. Example, looking at chocolate stores. Chatting on WhatsApp about buying chocolate. Etc. Sensible reach, no such thing. You need to have historical conversions to make an assumption.  
by (210 points)
Thanks Joel, I really appreciate your comment. We use Facebook ads in a pretty unique way - recruiting participants for market research projects. This means we typically have 1 or 2 weeks to target a completely fresh audience and get a specific number of them to convert - to sign up to take part in the research. Yet we have to commit to that number in advance. Sometimes we hit 'a wall' during our projects where the cost per conversion starts to go up very significantly and we have in essence, exhausted our audience of peope willing to take part, no matter what ad creative we try, and how we mix up our audience (athough both those things do of course help). I am trying to better predict when that might happen when we scope out the project to avoid situations where we commit to a number of conversions that proves to be unachievable. Any tips as to how we might do this would be hugely appreciated!  
by (8.4k points)
You can by setting up exclusions. Show an ad to someone who has never interacted with your business in whatsoever way. Page engagement, likes, etc. This way the algo always looks for new prospects. Mix it up with retargeting and you can stop increasing CPA.  
by (210 points)
Thans @uranyl - the people we target are generally very different. e. g at any given time we might be targeting electric car owners in California, Apple fans in Poland, or beer drinkers in Kenya. But generally each of those we only for 2-4 weeks, then the projects over and we don't have any use for that audience again. Unless researchers come back to us wanting to speak to the same type of audience.  
by (8.4k points)
@thrice7769 I guess you can still base it off your past conversions. Better than guesstimates.  
+3 votes
by (7.8k points)
It’s just difficult to answer this question as there are so many variables. FB optimizes based on a max 7 day period and that can change seasonally. However, on average I see about 50-60% reached after 50k spent on that single 1% lookalike. But that could be biased as I’m not accounting for seasonality and other factors.  
by (210 points)
@deodar thanks Vincent, that’s a really helpful guide and much appreciated! Could you let me know what you mean by ‘FB optimises based on a max 7 day period’ please?  
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