The Reach Objective an often overlooked and perhaps misunderstood objective.

The intelligence of the Facebook algorithm and its ability to find the people most likely to take your desired action is incredible, but it can mean that your ads are shown to some people multiple times while never being shown to others in your audience.

The algorithm has good reason to choose these people and as more people take your desired action, it becomes even better at identifying the best people.

But what if you are certain you want everyone in your audience to see your ad? As I mentioned in my video, if for example you have an ecommerce website you might want to retarget everyone who recently added a product to your cart but didn’t purchase. Perhaps you would like to offer them a discount to entice them to come back.

You might be tempted to create an ad with a conversion objective, but there’s a good chance it was an ad with a conversion objective that brought them to your site in the first place. If that was the case then you already know that Facebook considers these people to have a high chance of converting so you don’t need to optimise for it again.

By using the reach objective, you will ensure that as many people in your audience as possible will see your ad, and unlike other objectives, you have the added benefit of being able to set a frequency cap to ensure your ad isn’t shown repeatedly to the same people.

I recommend starting with a frequency cap of once in every 3 or 4 days so people will only see your ad about twice a week.

The reach objective can also work well for local businesses where you know your product or offer is highly relevant to your target audience but doesn’t require an online action.


Video Transcript:

Hi there! This week I want to continue talking about the objectives for your Facebook and Instagram ad campaigns. and I want to focus on the reach objective.

Unlike other objectives, where the algorithm is trying to show your ads to the people most likely to take your desired action, with the reach objective, the algorithm is trying to show your ads to as many people as possible within your target audience.

So where this works very well is if you have a very defined target audience. For example, if you have an audience made of people that have added products to the cart on your website but haven’t made a purchase then you might want to show them an ad to remind them to come back.

But rather than let the algorithm decide who the best people are to show your ad to, you want to just make sure that that ad is being shown to as many people as possible. So to do that use the reach objective. All of the best,  and see you again next week.