One of our clients (a hotel chain) asked if they should run untargeted ads (the entire United States) to let the Facebook algo figure things out or run against smaller audiences first.
Here’s what I advised:
Yes, you want to let Facebook do the “heavy lifting” for you.
If the objective is conversion, you want to give the algo a general push in the direction by using custom audiences and high-quality targets before unleashing large lookalikes or running untargeted.
We’ve seen some accounts go straight to untargeted (all US or multiple countries) with success, but the CPA is often higher during the learning curve as Facebook is figuring out who is buying (50 conversions per ad set per week).
We also like to warm up audiences and then remarket to them with conversion ads, instead of running cold audiences straight to conversion– as the penalty of negative feedback and low engagement is getting higher.
