Detailed targeting narrows who sees a promoted post or a Create Ad wizard ad to people Meta groups by interest, behaviour or demographic: for example Small business owners, Entrepreneurship, a job title or an industry. It is the same Detailed targeting box as in Meta Ads Manager.
Where to set it
- Boost this post, under Who should see it
- Ads > Create Ad, on the Audience step
- A boost's own page, under Who it reaches. This also changes a boost that is already staged or running.
How it works
- Type a word and pick from Meta's suggestions. Each choice shows as a chip you can remove.
- Several choices widen the audience: a person needs to match only one of them. Countries, ages and gender still apply on top.
- With no age, gender or detailed targeting set, Meta's Advantage+ audience finds the people itself. Once you set any of them, the ad is aimed at people who fit. For some goals, such as sales and app installs, Meta may still reach a little past detailed targeting when it expects better results.
- Changing the audience of a running ad makes Meta start learning again, so do it early, ideally before it has spent much.
- The same people can sit under an interest, a behaviour or a job title, so try a few wordings.
To reach people similar to your own customers instead, build a lookalike under Ads > Audiences. Meta needs at least 100 matched contacts for one.
API: search with GET /api/v1/ads/targeting/search/?type=detailed&q=..., then pass the results as detailed_targeting when you create a boost, or with the set_detailed_targeting action on POST /api/v1/ads/boosts/<id>/action/. AI assistants connected over MCP use search_targeting.
