Everything you need to know about Lookalike Audiences for your Facebook Ads

What's a Lookalike Audience?

A Lookalike Audience refers to a set of new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they're similar to those who have engaged or interacted with your e-commerce business in various different ways. They are a great source for adding to that store traffic and bringing in potential new customers.

In order to create a Lookalike Audience, you need a seed audience that Facebook uses to find similar people based on their interests, behaviors, etc. Let's discuss the type of audiences that can be used as seed audiences for lookalikes.

Audience from static email lists, e.g., your subscription list
Audience from your store's order data (your customer list)
Audience from value-based sources like Pixel and Catalog
Audience from social media & video engagers
Pixel audiences

Lookalikes from static email list

Lookalikes from static email list will not update automatically as the seed audience is fixed. If you want to keep the lookalikes updated, reload your complete email list every month (can be weekly or biweekly, depending on the list growth) and generate a new lookalike with this new updated list as seed audience.

Lookalikes from customer lists

Lookalikes from customer lists can be created in two different ways.

1. Download your order data from your e-commerce platform and upload it as a list on facebook.

It will behave exactly like a static list and your lookalike audience will not be updated automatically. If you want to keep your lookalike audience updated, reload your order data every month (once again, can be weekly or biweekly depending on the list growth) and create a new lookalike with this new updated list as seed audience.

2. Use Socioh to create order data audience on facebook.

By using Socioh you will be able to upload your customer list directly from your e-commerce platform the facebook. Once the customer list is uploaded, you can create a lookalike audience from Socioh’s interface. This lookalike will be updated automatically as Socioh will keep on refreshing your customer data seed audience on daily basis.

As per Facebook, lookalikes are updated every 72 hours.

Lookalikes from value based sources like Pixel and Catalog

There is no seed audience required to create a lookalike in this case. Instead you have an option to choose your Pixel or your Catalog as seed. Facebook will automatically analyze the behavior in your Pixel and Catalog based on the last 60 days' data and update your lookalikes automatically.

Lookalikes from Social Media Engagers

You can create custom audiences based on people who have engaged with your Facebook business page, Instagram handle or people who have watched your video content in the past 365 days. Furthermore, you can use these audiences as seed audiences and create lookalikes. These lookalikes will be automatically updated by Facebook as custom audiences in this case are automatically updated by facebook.

Lookalikes based on Pixel data

Facebook provides various different events on Pixel which can be used to segment users based on behavior. Facebook keeps data of the last 180 days and this data is dynamic. Users can be segregated based on Page View, View Content, Add to Cart, initiate checkout and purchasers. Any of these audiences can be used as a seed audience for the lookalikes and these lookalikes are automatically updated.

In short, lookalike audiences will automatically update if the seed audiences are updated and seed audiences can be manually or automatically updated based on their type.