What this is for

The Audience step sets the locations and supported audience choices for an ad. It is not a box for a free-text description of your ideal customer: locations, interests and communities must be chosen from their actual results. A platform can use audience hints differently from another platform, and AI hints are not strict restrictions.

Before you start

Open a paid-ad draft and choose its platforms and ad accounts first. Search choices depend on the selected account.
Decide the locations where the business can actually serve customers.
Decide whether the content concerns housing. In the real-estate edition, keep the housing classification and the actual content in agreement; do not change it to bypass restrictions.
If editing a running Meta idea, read the live-ad rules first. Its audience mode is locked and stricter Advantage+ constraints apply.

1. Select the audience to edit

Open Audience. The page asks Who should see it?
If the plan has several ideas, select an idea by name. Its audience settings appear below.
Edit that idea's settings. Use Apply to all ideas only if you want to replace the other ideas' audiences with this one. Inspect the individual ideas again before launching.

2. Choose actual locations

Under Where are your customers?, use Search a city, region or country. Enter at least two characters when searching the connected account's location catalog.
Choose a result from the list. Read its location type and country code to distinguish, for example, cities with the same name in different countries.
After selection, the search clears and a location row appears. That row, not the typed query, is what is included in the audience.
Repeat for other locations. The picker permits up to 50 selected locations and prevents choosing the same location twice.
For an incorrect location, use Remove on its row. Keep at least one location selected; an empty audience is blocked before launch.

If the selected platforms have no supported general location-search account, the picker uses Search a country and a country list. It does not let you turn a typed city into a supported location. Reddit targets countries here; ChatGPT uses country targeting. Review every platform's supported-location messages when combining platforms.

Set a city radius

City rows have Distance around and a km / mi unit selector. A non-housing city can be City only with the radius empty. When a radius is set, the field accepts whole numbers from 1 to 80 in the selected unit. Housing has a higher minimum: 25 km or 15 mi, with the same maximum of 80 in the selected unit.

Changing the unit changes the unit of the setting; check the resulting number instead of assuming it was converted to the same physical distance. Out-of-range numeric entries can move to the allowed limit when saved. Read the displayed value again after saving or continuing.

3. Choose how the audience is found

Let AI find people

Choose Let AI find people (recommended). Locations remain part of the setup, while supported hints guide the platform rather than imposing a strict audience boundary. Meta explicitly warns that it may show the ad beyond the hinted audience when it expects better results.

Meta uses hints and can look further for likely responders.
Google's Performance Max uses the goal, assets and destination; the editor says audience hints are not sent to Google.
TikTok can use smart targeting beyond your hints.
LinkedIn can expand the audience and optimize creative rotation.
Pinterest, X and ChatGPT use the supported locations without a promise of automatic audience expansion.
Reddit uses countries and any selected communities and conversation keywords; no automatic expansion is promised.

Choose the audience yourself

Choose I’ll choose who sees it. Where offered, set Minimum age, Maximum age, Gender, Interests and Languages. The general draft age fields allow 13–65, and maximum age cannot be below minimum age; this is an editor input range, not a guarantee that every platform or ad category accepts those ages.

Reddit-only plans do not offer age or interest targeting. Manual Reddit audiences can use gender and languages alongside countries and Reddit-specific targeting. Housing removes age and gender choices. Always read the note for each selected platform: unsupported choices do not become supported merely because a shared field is visible.

4. Select interests and behaviors

Under Optional audience hints in AI mode, or Interests in manual mode, inspect Suggested for your business when suggestions are available.
In Search interests or behaviors, type at least two characters. Choose an actual returned interest or behavior; merely leaving text in the search does not add it.
For Meta, Browse categories opens the available categories. Expand a category and choose an item from it.
Confirm that chosen items appear as removable selections. Up to 200 can be selected, and duplicate selections are disabled.
If shown, read Audience size as the platform's supplied estimate, not a guaranteed delivery count or number of leads.

If the search is disabled, check that you selected a platform and account that support targeting search. Do not interpret missing suggestions as a requirement to invent or manually type an interest ID.

5. Configure Reddit communities and keywords

For a Reddit account, use Reddit communities and keywords rather than generic interests.

Type at least two characters in Search Reddit communities.
Select a returned r/ community. It appears as a removable selection. The displayed member count, when available, describes the returned community, not your campaign's guaranteed reach.
In Conversation keywords, enter a word or phrase and choose Add, or press Enter.
Repeat as needed. The picker permits up to 50 communities and 50 keywords; each keyword is 1–100 characters after trimming. Keywords that differ only by capitalization are treated as duplicates.
Remove an unwanted community or keyword with its remove control.

You can leave both lists empty and let Reddit choose. This does not remove the need for countries, suitable creative or the Reddit pixel setup.

6. Choose Meta placements when offered

In a manual Meta audience, open Where should the ad appear?

Automatic (recommended) lets Meta choose supported placements.
Choose the places opens placement checkboxes. Options include Facebook Feed, Stories and Reels; Instagram Feed, Stories and Reels; Messenger Inbox; and Partner apps.
Keep at least one supported placement or return to Automatic. Forms only appear in placements that support forms; listing a placement does not guarantee that this particular goal can use it.

These placement controls are not a request to choose Instagram or Facebook organically. They are placement settings for the Meta paid ad.

Housing restrictions

With Yes, it’s about housing, Meta's housing audience uses ages 18–65 and all genders, with no ZIP-code targeting. City radius must be at least 25 km / 15 mi. Other platforms have their own housing rules.

For the real-estate edition, turning housing off requires every selected location to be in Israel. Adding locations outside that permitted set can restore the housing classification and its restrictions. A country-only picker does not bypass the classification.

7. Review the result

Return to Review. Check each platform's locations and whether it shows People the AI finds, Chosen by you or Launched audience. The last one refers to the saved audience of an already launched platform, not new edits to an unlaunched one. For grouped ideas, inspect every idea's summary.

If something goes wrong

Symptom	Cause to check	Fix
Search gives no choices	Too-short query, a failed search or no matching catalog result	Use at least two characters, refine the name or country, and use Try again for a load error.
A typed location disappears but no row appears	No result was selected	Search again and click the actual result.
Only countries are available	No supported general location-search account is selected, or the platform uses country targeting	Choose a country; do not expect a city or ZIP field on every platform.
A search result cannot be added	It is already selected or the selection limit was reached	Remove an existing selection first if you need to replace it.
ZIP codes disappear or radius increases	Housing rules are applied	Use supported housing locations and at least the required city radius.
A field is locked	The platform has launched, housing rules apply, or the current live audience mode does not support it	Edit only the supported fields. For a different live Meta mode, create a new campaign rather than forcing an update.
A platform rejects the audience	A shared selection is unsupported by that platform	Follow its specific location or targeting warning and check the account's platform settings.