Hey,

Sorry once again for the recent gap in these emails.

I’ve had more work disruption in the last six months than in the last six years and I’m doing my best to work around it. I can’t grouse too much – I’m safe and healthy and too many people in the world can’t say that right now – so I’ll just leave it at that and move on.

What’s on the menu today? Well, you are getting a monster email to make up for things so let’s get right into it.

Facebook made some major changes to targeting in the last month or so, which are still playing out, causing anguish among experienced users – especially those who find themselves unable to target previously lucrative audiences, and who face a deadline of March 17 to change some of their long-running, profitable ads.

Today’s email is for both beginners and experts because we are going to take an overall look at targeting before looking at what Facebook has removed, what you can target instead, and how to tweak any long-running ads you have feeding your series starters or mailing lists so they keep running after March 17 (without losing any of that valuable, hard-won social proof).

I’ll cover the steps you need to take at the end of this email – experienced users might want to skip head to Facebook Targeting Changes below, and perhaps just skim the rest.

But for everyone else, let’s take a deep dive into how targeting works, so that you are pointing your ads at the right readers.

Importance of Targeting

I see targeting as one of the “Big 3” things your ad should get right – not unlike BookBub Ads (although similarities mostly end there).

Targeting is also the most fundamental of those Big 3 because if your ads are being shown to all the wrong people then it won’t matter how pretty your images are, or how compelling your text.

So, it’s pretty important… but you wouldn’t guess that by the way Facebook glosses over it in the ad creation interface.

(If you are new to this series on Facebook, the first three emails covered that ad creation interface in great detail and you can learn all about the basics of creating a campaign by catching up at the Email Archive.)

Aside from making interest targeting hard to find, Facebook also makes the process of finding good interests rather unwieldy. There’s no real shortcut other than plugging in author names and book niches until you get a potential match. There are tools out there which claim to streamline this process, but most are quite pricey, of questionable value anyway, and I can’t really recommend any of them. You just have to roll up your sleeves and work through it.

Facebook does make some automated suggestions, but they can be anything from great to terrible – definitely filter any suggestions you get from Facebook or you can end up adding an interest which can tank your ad.

To give an obvious example, if you are targeting Nook owners Facebook can suggest adding Kindle owners – which might look “similar” to an AI without the necessary nuance, but could be disastrous for you.

Salt is then rubbed in the targeting wound by Facebook because the interface generally prompts you to use Detailed Targeting Expansion to increase your potential audience – and who doesn’t want to increase their potential audience? Except it generally means Facebook will start adding in interests to your audience broadly based on the kind of suggestions above, which is like playing Russian Roulette with your targeting. Take my word for it: don’t do it.

How do you handle all this?

1. Familiarize yourself with the targeting part of the ad creation interface. Go over Part 2 of this series on Facebook Ads so that you understand what each option does. You don’t want to tick/untick anything that will ruin your chances of success – and the potential is certainly there when it comes to messing with anything around targeting. (And Facebook doesn’t exactly warn you when you accidentally select, “Please donate all my book royalties to Zuck’s mission to build a crappier version of Second Life.”)

2. Pay attention to the different “levels” of targeting. Top-level targeting is the first box, where you should put your comp author(s) and/or niche. Be aware that inputting “James Patterson” and “George RR Martin” in that top line doesn’t seek out people that exclusively and specifically like stabby, grimdark mysteries. Putting two things in this box means Facebook will target people that like either – a very broad audience indeed – not both. Just be aware.

3. Understand narrowing – the second “level” of targeting. I usually narrow by something like “Kindle” or “Audible” or “Kobo” – but certainly not all together if I’m sending people to Amazon, as I often do.

4. Beware the third “level” of targeting – excluding. This is where you can ask Facebook not to target things like your mailing list or anyone that has Liked your Page, and so on. If you aren’t very comfortable with targeting and Custom Audiences (or don’t know what the latter are), then just ignore this or you can mess up your ad.

5. Plug in all your potential comp authors and relevant niches, and see which are available for targeting now, as Facebook has winnowed the field considerably this year. Store any matches safely in a spreadsheet or Word doc where you can record your results because you will need to…

6. Test, test, test to see which interests work for you.

I’m sure we’ll do a whole email on testing and optimizing, so don’t worry we’ll get into that in more detail in the future. But those are the basics on targeting, why it’s so important, how Facebook makes it tricky to handle, and also the ways you can work around the more common issues.

But interest targeting is only one type of targeting.

Types of Targeting

In simple terms, there are three main types of targeting on Facebook:

• Interest Targeting.
• Custom Audiences.
• Lookalike Audiences.

Interest Targeting is what Facebook often calls Detailed Targeting these days and is what we covered above. It’s the most suitable for beginners for reasons that will become clear in a moment, but you should be aware of the other types. While intermediate users will be using Custom Audiences more and more, and expert users will start expanding into Lookalike Audiences, even the most advanced Facebook Ads user will often still use Interest Targeting quite a bit – it’s that useful.

Custom Audiences are built from data you feed Facebook rather than vice versa. With Custom Audiences you can run ads to your mailing list, people who visit your website, or those who interact with your Page as well as your Facebook posts, your ads, your videos, and so on.

Lookalike Audiences are the lovechild of your data and Facebook’s because, in simple terms, you feed Facebook a Custom Audience (like your mailing list), and it builds a much larger audience of completely new people who “look” like those on your mailing list.

Most authors starting out advertising on Facebook won’t have a big enough list, or sufficient web traffic, or so many Likes on their Facebook Page – which is why Interest Targeting is generally the way to go.

But Custom Audiences can be much more valuable – and the overall privacy trend is pushing platforms like Facebook away from things like Interest Targeting (third-party data) and towards Custom Audiences (first-party data) – so it’s a good idea to start thinking about how you could build up at least one of those things (mailing list is best, if you need a nudge, as building that up will also help you achieve several other author goals as well as being inherently valuable on its own).

I’m just flagging the existence of these other targeting options now because we will be covering them more in the future. Not least because of those Facebook changes which are causing such consternation.

Facebook Targeting Changes

Let’s cut to the chase: this is not one of those changes you can simply ignore.

Everyone knows that Facebook tinkers with things relentlessly and often the changes are more minor or of a cosmetic nature, and tend to get overblown by users, quite frankly – as with Amazon, I guess.

But these targeting changes are considerable – for some authors, at least – and go much deeper than previously flagged when announced last November when Facebook made it sound like they were simply going to remove targeting around some sensitive topics.

In short, some of you are losing the ability to target some very useful audiences. Not only that, some of you running ongoing ads will find them paused by Facebook once March 17 rolls around… unless you take action in advance.

Which interests have been axed? And which ads will be paused?

Well, the only way of telling is to log into your Facebook Ad Account and go see. There should be a warning banner at the top of your dashboard which will lead you to affected campaigns and audiences – where the upcoming deletions will be highlighted.

For example, the “Kindle” interest is being axed, and I’m sure many of you will have used that in the past, or are using it in ongoing ads right now.

Since January, any axed interests – like “Kindle” – have not been targetable in new campaigns (although there was a sneaky workaround where you could use old saved audiences with those interests... which will also stop working on March 17).

Here’s the important bit for those with ongoing campaigns using any interests which are going away: Facebook is warning that there is a strong likelihood that campaigns using those interests will be automatically paused on March 17.

Avoiding that fate is simple though: you just need to go in and edit the ad to remove the respective interest before March 17 to ensure it won't be switched off.

(E.g. I just need to remove the “Kindle” narrowing on any on going ads, and any other interests Facebook might be highlighting for removal, of course.)

In case anyone is freaking out at this point, let me reassure you further: you can still effectively target Kindle owners as Facebook still as “Amazon Kindle” and “Kindle Store” as targetable interests.

To put some bald numbers on it, the respective audience sizes are roughly as follows in the USA:

• Kindle – 7m.
• Kindle Store – 11m.
• Amazon Kindle – 22m.

And it’s the top one (Kindle – 7m) which is going away on March 17… so not half as bad as it might seem at first glance.

Facebook is insinuating that axed audiences are replicated elsewhere, so it’s entirely possible we aren’t losing that much here, and that most of those readers can still be targeted by sticking to using “Kindle Store” and “Amazon Kindle.” In case you think that’s too optimistic, those with a close eye on the UK market will remember that “Amazon Kindle UK” was axed as a targetable interest at some point during the time-sludge of 2020-2021 and the effects weren’t as bad as feared.

Some authors are facing a much bigger problem, however.

I was contacted by several writers who are successfully using Facebook Ads but are seeing their most profitable interests disappear completely. For example, one author of Viking-era historical fiction is losing the ability to target various Viking-related interests and TV shows that worked well for her. Others are seeing comp authors or literary niches disappear altogether – without any obvious replacements like the above.

It's difficult to get a sense of the true scale of this problem so I need your help.

Hit Reply to this email if you are losing a valuable interest – with the exact name of the interest as it appears on Facebook. You don’t need to send me any more information than that, I’m collecting a list of such interests to pass on to a friend at Facebook. Obviously, I can’t make any promises here, but if there is an interest that is going away without an obvious replacement – i.e. where those eyeballs aren’t replicated elsewhere – then he’ll take a look.

That’s a longshot though, so let’s examine some general ways you can work around this problem – broken out into specific tips for beginners and intermediate/expert users.

Tips For Beginners

If a useful interest of yours is going away on March 17, then there’s no point spending money in testing that interest right now. Instead, try to identify potential alternatives. We’ll talk more about testing soon, but for now draw up a list of test candidates. I’m planning to put together some kind of video as well to give you more visual help on this, and ad creation generally, as I know it's a sticking point for many. Looking longer term, start thinking about how you can develop your own custom audiences – i.e. your mailing list, your website traffic, your Page Likes etc. The most obvious and useful is your list, so take this as Reminder #2907 to build a strong mailing list.

Once you have a decent sized custom audience, you can target that with ads – which is a super effective strategy – and do all sorts of flashy things with Facebook Ads, including expanding audiences even further with Lookalikes. Don’t worry if you don’t understand all that stuff just yet, just start thinking over the longer term about developing at least one custom audience you can start playing with in the future. This is the overall trend that ads are going in anyway.

For Intermediate/Expert Users

It’s incredibly frustrating to build up your skill and experience with Facebook Ads only to have a profitable audience ripped away from you, but long-term users will also know this isn’t the first time (and certainly won’t be the last). Together with the Apple changes last year, it’s been a frustrating 12 months for Facebook Ads users.

That said, it’s still the leading ad platform by a huge distance, in my opinion, and I don’t expect that to change in the short term. So it’s best to find solutions here rather than chasing the chimera of TikTok or whatever.

The most obvious solution, if you have interests going away, is to hunt high and low in that pesky interface for replacements. You might need to use some lateral thinking around TV shows or movies, and do another round of testing, but it should be worth it if you find a good audience.

In strategic terms, if you haven’t developed your custom audiences yet, now is the time to really get on that – and start working as many angles as possible (and I’m sure we will get into more detail on that in a future email). And even if you do have good custom audiences already, I’m sure you are sweating those as much as you can already, so maybe try Lookalikes if you passed on those before.

Make sure you remove those expiring interests before March 17. If “Kindle” was the only thing narrowing your ads, make sure to replace it with “Kindle Store” and/or “Amazon Kindle” after you do that, or your ad will go out to that raw, broad audience instead – which you almost certainly don’t want. And don't worry about losing social proof because that only happens if you make changes at the Ad level, not at the Ad Set level, where targeting resides.

Finally, watch out for Facebook's official advice on this topic as it isn't always helpful for authors targeting readers. Particularly ignore the much-pushed suggestion to use Detailed Targeting Expansion as it can ruin your ads by showing them to all the wrong readers!

Dave

P.S. Writing music this week is Stevie Wonder with Heaven Help Us All.