Facebook Ads - How They Count People for Ads Planning & Measurement

So an announcement from Facebook got buried recently.

Up until now, if someone with the same email address had both Facebook and Instagram, they were counted as ONE person.

In the next few weeks, Facebook will start treating users who have both a Facebook account and an Instagram account as TWO separate people, unless that individual links the two accounts.

Why is Facebook making this change?

“This update aligns with trends of offering people more control over how their information is used for ads and is consistent with evolving advertising, privacy, and regulatory environments,” wrote Facebook’s VP of product marketing, Graham Mudd.

If history and data is any indication, the vast majority (50%? 80%?) will not take these steps, and your audiences will now be different with an overlap.

So, what does this mean for your social marketing and efforts?

1 - Treat Facebook and Instagram as two separate audiences. They already are, but now it's more official. Facebook is mostly users 45-65 years old, and Instagram is mostly 25-45 years old.

2 - Treat your posts separately. Higher ticket items are better on Facebook, lower ticket items are better on Instagram (keep using Linktree!).

3 - With ad campaigns, take audience predictions with a grain of salt. Before the numbers were smaller, now the numbers may become larger, BUT remember that your frequency of your ads being seen by the same person may increase.

(This is A Good Thing. 🙂 )

Keep posting regularly on Facebook, keep creating custom audiences to boost your posts into for a few dollars per day (the extra reach is always worth it), and keep posting consistently on Instagram.

Your store doesn't serve just one type of demographic or customer. Now social media is catching up!