It could be Facebook audiences you’ve created and saved using Facebook’s ads targeting options, Facebook custom audiences assembled from your website visitors, or audiences you’ve created from uploading a customer list into your Facebook ads account. Once you have at least 2 audiences listed in the Audiences section of your Ads account, you can compare those audiences to each other to see how similar they are. This audience comparison tool is called Facebook Audience Overlap.

Why You Want to Use the Facebook Audience Overlap Tool

One of the most critical aspects of Facebook ads – or, well, any advertising – is testing. You’re not very likely to find an awesome-performing audience at your first go at an ad. The Facebook Audience Overlap tool allows you to compare 2 audiences to see how much overlap there is (meaning, what percentage of people are in both audiences). To do some solid target testing, you’ll want to test 2 or more audiences that have very little overlap (so, a very low %).

What you may find, as outlined below, is that some audiences you create are surprising either very different or very much the same. And the only way to know how similar (or not) they are is by comparing your Facebook audiences using the Audience Overlap tool.

How to Use the Facebook Audience Overlap Tool

Start by visiting your Facebook Ads account (https://www.facebook.com/ads/manager) and selecting Audiences from the drop-down menu.

When there, you’ll see a list of all existing saved audiences you’ve created. Note: if you haven’t created any audiences either by saving audiences you built when setting up an ad or through custom audience creation, you won’t see anything in this view. 

Select 2 or more audiences to compare by clicking on the check boxes on the left. 

Click on the Actions button, then Show Audience Overlap.

Your view will refresh and you’ll see a graphical representation of the overlap between the selected audiences, a count of people who overlap and a percentage of overlap.

At the bottom, you’ll see a link to click to Add Another Audience. This is one way you can add another audience to your view.

The Facebook Audience Overlap tool is beneficial for research as part of your Facebook ads targeting strategy.