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Broad targeting vs interests, lookalikes and retargeting on Meta (2023 → 2026)

How targeting advice flipped from Smart Marketer's 2023 70/15/15 interest/lookalike/broad split to 2025–2026 broad-by-default — and the remaining cases for interests (forcing a new avatar, lead gen), geo-only (local), customer exclusions, and Advantage+ as audience research.

Updated 2026-10-24·10 sources·meta-adstargetingbroad-targetinglookalikesretargetingadvantage-plus

Broad vs interests, lookalikes and retargeting

TL;DR

  • 2025–2026 default: broad (no detailed targeting), automatic placements, optimise for the purchase — creative does the targeting.123
  • Dara Denney: Andromeda/GEM made interests and even prospecting-vs-retargeting splits “pretty much useless”; she runs no retargeting on most brands even at $500K–1M/month.45
  • Exclude existing customers from top-of-funnel campaigns, or Meta may quietly retarget your warm base.6
  • Interests still have two uses (Molly Pittman, 2026): forcing Meta toward a new avatar (e.g. a bodybuilder supplement moving into older women doing yoga) and big lead-gen launches (a planned ~$50K lead-gen push targeting marketing tools/gurus).78
  • Local businesses: geo radius only (her restaurant: 50 miles), no interests.7
  • Detailed targeting and lookalikes are only suggestions for most performance goals now; they “can’t hurt” but you can’t prove they help (Jon Loomer). Restrict age/gender/placements only for age-restricted goods — otherwise use value rules for proven problems (Meta value rules — bid more for people worth more (instead of restricting targeting)).910
  • Remarketing happens algorithmically: define audience segments and Meta’s breakdown typically shows 10–30%+ of budget already reaching warm people (Meta audience segments — proving remarketing happens on its own).11

Details

Why broad works now. Meta’s unified models can match the right ad to the right user, and Meta reads creative, copy and Page signals to find buyers — “creative is the new targeting”.1213 Josh Brampton’s caveat: a niche-looking ad still only reaches the niche that consumes that content; to reach other buyers you need ads that look like their feed.14

The 2023 baseline (for contrast). Smart Marketer’s 70/15/15 rule: ~70% of top-of-funnel budget on interest clusters (aggregated to 5–20M audience for tests, 15M+ for scaling), 15% lookalikes, 15% broad. Buyers spent ~30% of their day on off-platform interest research; accounts ran 26–95 ad sets differing only by interests. Lookalikes were coming back: for Ella + Mila a 1% LAL got 100 customers at $37 CPA vs 5–7% LAL 331 customers at $34 — larger LALs need 7–14 days. Best LAL seeds: purchasers, email subscribers, top-20% customers by spend.15161718

Advantage+ as research. In 2023 an Advantage+ campaign revealed many buyers over 40 for a product the team assumed was young-skewing; new campaigns for that avatar took the client from $10K to $15K/day.19

Low-budget rule (Ben Heath, Loomer). At ~$100/month: broad, at most interests as suggestions, no hard constraints, no warm audiences — a small budget can’t recover from a too-narrow bet. Loomer’s low-volume recipe: target by location (country) only, keep all placements.2021

2020 baseline. Savannah Sanchez’s 2020 ecommerce structure tested on a 1% purchaser lookalike plus broad-interest audiences (min. 2M) with interest expansion on, then scaled winners across 5% lookalikes and interest stacks — the era before broad-by-default.22

Disagreements / caveats

  • Molly in 2023 (“interest targeting is still where the money is”) vs Molly in 2026 (“broad… no detailed targeting… hurts me in the chest”) — the platform changed, so treat the 2023 split as obsolete except for the avatar-forcing use.153
  • Retargeting: Dara runs none; Smart Marketer’s Andromeda layout keeps one win-back campaign (see How to structure a Meta ads account in 2025–2026).
  • Dara’s “no awareness/engagement campaigns” has an exception for brands at multiple seven figures/month, where Meta lift tests showed delayed conversions.23

See also

Footnotes

  1. How Smart Brands Are Buying Meta Media in 2026 | Smart Marketer Show Ep 11 FULL EPISODE @ 18:10 — Molly Pittman ↩

  2. How Smart Brands Are Buying Meta Media in 2026 | Smart Marketer Show Ep 11 FULL EPISODE @ 19:26 — Molly Pittman ↩

  3. How Smart Brands Are Buying Meta Media in 2026 | Smart Marketer Show Ep 11 FULL EPISODE @ 27:07 — Molly Pittman ↩ ↩2

  4. Meta's Andromeda & GEM: Clearly Explained @ 00:00 — Dara Denney ↩

  5. How to Structure Your Meta Ads Account in 2026 (the right way) @ 01:33 — Dara Denney ↩

  6. How Smart Brands Are Buying Meta Media in 2026 | Smart Marketer Show Ep 11 FULL EPISODE @ 27:58 — Molly Pittman ↩

  7. How Smart Brands Are Buying Meta Media in 2026 | Smart Marketer Show Ep 11 FULL EPISODE @ 1:05:04 — Molly Pittman ↩ ↩2

  8. How Smart Brands Are Buying Meta Media in 2026 | Smart Marketer Show Ep 11 FULL EPISODE @ 1:06:06 — Molly Pittman ↩

  9. The Foundational Elements of Meta Advertising Today @ 01:33 — Jon Loomer ↩

  10. The Mistakes I See in Almost Every Ad Account @ 04:02 — Jon Loomer ↩

  11. The Foundational Elements of Meta Advertising Today @ 03:56 — Jon Loomer ↩

  12. Meta's Andromeda & GEM: Clearly Explained @ 05:44 — Dara Denney ↩

  13. How Smart Brands Are Buying Meta Media in 2026 | Smart Marketer Show Ep 11 FULL EPISODE @ 08:50 — Molly Pittman ↩

  14. Andromeda demands this new ad structure | Do it easily with Motion @ 03:05 — Josh Brampton ↩

  15. What's Working Now With Meta Ads with Molly Pittman @ 24:05 — Molly Pittman ↩ ↩2

  16. What's Working Now With Meta Ads with Molly Pittman @ 27:20 — Molly Pittman ↩

  17. What's Working Now With Meta Ads with Molly Pittman @ 28:52 — Molly Pittman ↩

  18. What's Working Now With Meta Ads with Molly Pittman @ 29:44 — Molly Pittman ↩

  19. What's Working Now With Meta Ads with Molly Pittman @ 41:55 — Molly Pittman ↩

  20. $100 vs $100,000 Facebook Ads Strategy @ 02:22 — Ben Heath ↩

  21. A Simple, Volume-Focused Ad Strategy @ 04:56 — Jon Loomer ↩

  22. Advanced Facebook Ad Account Structure For eCommerce @ 04:44 — Savannah Sanchez ↩

  23. How to Structure Your Meta Ads Account in 2026 (the right way) @ 03:04 — Dara Denney ↩