Exclusion audiences are absolutely key when you’re advertising on the Facebook/Meta Ads platform.

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So many advertisers just set up a Bottom Of Funnel Retargeting campaign and won’t make any adjustments to the Top Of Funnel to segment the audiences apart.

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Despite audiences being affected post-iOS14, where not everyone is put into audiences as neatly as before the update, we would still recommend having your middle and bottom of funnel audiences as exclusion audiences in your Top of Funnel.

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This means that in testing, you won’t have any people that should belong to your retargeting efforts in your Top of Funnel testing that end up being targeted. This will throw in an element that you hadn’t planned for.

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Furthermore, when scaling on Facebook, you’ll want to ensure that your budget is being used effectively. The way that the Facebook ads algorithm works is that it will try and show your ads to people that are more likely to convert first before progressing onto people who are less likely to take that action. If your retargeting audience isn’t excluded in the scaling campaign, you’re going to end up with wasted budget going onto reaching warm audiences more times instead of using your scaling budget to reach new people.

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On top of testing and scaling, there are also learnings to consider. 

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A big buzzword in today’s Facebook ads landscape is consolidation. In some cases, in accounts with quite a lot of budget and data, you will have the opportunity to consolidate and ensure that enough learnings are being attributed to the appropriate ads, ad sets and campaigns for optimal results.

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Keep this in mind when creating campaigns, scaling and testing!

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Hope this helps!

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