A lookalike audience is a Meta Ads target audience that the algorithm builds automatically, modelled on your existing customers. You give the system a source audience (for example, buyers from the last 180 days). It analyses their characteristics and behaviour, then finds similar users who don’t know your brand yet.
What should you build a lookalike audience from?
The rule: the more valuable and the cleaner the source, the better the audience. A list of paying customers beats a list of everyone who visited your website, because it trains the algorithm on people who actually pay. The source can be events from the Meta Pixel, your email list or people who have interacted with your profile. The audience size (1-10% of a country’s population) is a trade-off: 1% is the closest match, while 5-10% gives you scale for bigger budgets.
Do lookalike audiences still work?
Yes, although their role has changed. Meta is pushing advertisers ever harder towards broad targeting and automated systems such as Advantage+, which find audiences on their own. In our Meta Ads campaigns, lookalikes still win tests on smaller budgets and in niche markets: where the automated system has too little data about the account, a good source audience gives it a head start. Don’t treat lookalikes as gospel: test them as one variant among others (A/B testing).
Related terms: retargeting, Meta Pixel.
