Meta Shopping Ads: Reach Potential Audiences on Facebook and Instagram with Precision

As overseas social media have launched e-commerce functions, more and more cross-border e-commerce companies have chosen to open stores on Facebook and Instagram in addition to opening stores on independent websites , and set up Meta shopping ad audiences to accurately deliver ads, attracting potential audiences who have viewed products but have not completed purchases, thereby effectively promoting their orders.

This article will introduce in detail what Meta shopping ad audiences are, how to create Meta shopping custom audiences, and the application scenarios of shopping ad audiences, helping companies to accurately reach potential audiences of Facebook and Instagram stores and increase store sales.

What is Meta Shopping Audience?

Shopping Ads Audiences is a feature of the Meta platform that helps businesses re-engage shoppers who are interested in their Facebook and Instagram stores through advertising. This feature accurately creates customized audiences based on data on users’ interactions with the business’ store page, products, specific products, and shopping cart operations, thereby improving the effectiveness of advertising and thereby increasing sales on the business’ Facebook and Instagram stores.

Note: The Meta shopping ad audience feature is available only on the Facebook public page of the store and on the Instagram professional account.

How to Create a Meta Shopping Custom Audience

1. Enter the shopping customization page

In Meta Ads Management, find [Audience] - [Create Custom Audience] - [Shopping] - [Next] to start setting up the shopping audience.

2. Customize your audience

(1) Platform

You can choose a Facebook page or an Instagram account.

(2) Public homepage

If a company operates multiple public pages, it can choose which public page to place the advertisement on. If there is only one public page, the advertisement will be placed on this public page by default.

(3) Activities

Select the audience's shopping behavior. The audience's shopping behavior can be divided into the following aspects:

Viewed store detail page : Audiences who viewed a business store’s product detail page on Facebook or Instagram.

Navigated from store to website : Audiences who navigated to a business’s website after viewing a product detail page through a business’s Facebook or Instagram store.

Save store products : Save the audience of the company's store products, which is equivalent to the operation of collecting products.

Viewed Store Page : Audiences who viewed a business store page on Facebook or Instagram.

Browse product collections : Audiences viewing collections of products in a business store organized by a specific theme or category, without browsing product detail pages.

Added products to cart : Audiences who added your product to the shopping cart.

Initiated Checkout : Audiences who have initiated checkout for products in your business store on Facebook or Instagram, but have not yet completed the purchase.

Completed Purchases : Audiences who have purchased products from your Facebook or Instagram store.

(4) Audience retention rate

The number of days people retain your store after they interact with it on Facebook or Instagram.

For example, if the audience set is the ones that interacted within 180 days, if a user has not interacted with the company store again after interacting with it 181 days ago, then the user is not the customized audience for this shopping, and if an advertisement is placed, it will not be pushed to this user.

(5) Including more audiences/excluding audiences

Attract more audiences: Add a condition to the first condition set above. For example, if the above condition is "audiences who have viewed the store homepage", and the condition to attract more people is set as "audiences who have added products to the shopping cart", then the shopping custom audience pushed by the final ad will become "audiences who have viewed the store homepage and added products to the shopping cart".
Exclude audience: In the case of the first condition set above, exclude the people in the conditions set below. For example, if the above setting is "people who add products to the shopping cart", and the condition of excluding people is set to "audiences who have purchased store products", then the shopping custom audience pushed by the final ad is "audiences who added products to the shopping cart but did not purchase the products."

(6) Audience name

Give the shopping custom audience a name to facilitate faster audience selection when placing advertisements later.

(7) Description

Describing the audience above is optional.

After understanding the seven settings of shopping custom audiences, you can start defining the audience. After setting [Platform] [Page] [Activity] [Audience Retention Rate] [Audience Name] in turn, click [Create Audience] to complete the setting of shopping custom audiences.

After the shopping ads custom audience is set up, you can create an advertising plan based on the settings and push the products of the company's store to the set audience homepage, thereby achieving precision marketing.

Application scenarios of Meta shopping advertising audience

Remarketing strategy

Remarketing is one of the most common uses of custom audiences for shopping ads. For those who have browsed your store products on Facebook or Instagram but did not complete the purchase, merchants can use ads to re-engage their attention.

For example, if you set a shopping custom audience to users who have browsed a certain series of products in your company's store, you can create an ad to push this series of products to these users and remarket to them. When users see the products again, their willingness to buy may be stimulated again.

Improve customer loyalty

In addition to attracting new users to place orders, shopping custom audiences can also help companies maintain relationships with existing customers and increase customer loyalty.

For example, a company can set a custom shopping audience as users who have purchased products in the company's store, create an advertising plan to push new products, exclusive offers, or membership discounts to these users, and encourage old users to make another purchase.

How to take over the audiences brought by shopping ads from multiple accounts?

Although ads placed on Facebook and Instagram by setting Meta shopping ad audiences can attract customers who are interested in a company’s store, these audiences may not place an order immediately after seeing the ad. They may inquire about the product before deciding whether to buy it.

All user consultation information will be sent to the company through the Facebook public page or Instagram professional account 's message receiving page. If the company operates multiple accounts and has a lot of consultation information, it can use the SaleSmartly platform to centralize all accounts into one backend, and manage user consultations brought by shopping ads of multiple accounts on one platform.

As an officially certified Business Partner of Meta, SaleSmartly not only allows companies to reply to messages from each account on a single platform, but also helps companies efficiently follow up with every potential audience through more advanced automation functions.

For example, companies can set up automated processes. When users inquire about a product through advertisements, automation can immediately release product-related information for users to understand, thereby speeding up users' ordering behavior.

Frequently asked questions

Do Facebook and Instagram Shops support online payments?

In countries and regions where the service is supported, purchases can be completed directly on Facebook or Instagram without having to jump to other platforms or external websites.

Will the audiences of shopping ads on multiple public pages conflict?

No. Meta allows merchants to customize the shopping ad audiences of different public pages, so as long as the public pages are distinguished when defining the audience, the audience will not conflict.