Wavo Blog: Facebook and Instagram U18 Audience Changes
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Morgan Nurmi
Ad Operations Coordinator at Wavo
Wavo Blog: This series shares information that’s most relevant to music marketers around the globe.
“Recent Meta privacy updates and changing social media user demographics have made it more difficult to target ads towards young people on Facebook and Instagram.”
Context
Recent Meta privacy updates and changing social media user demographics have made it more difficult to target ads towards young people on Facebook and Instagram. As of August of 2021 users under the age of 18 globally (and 20 in Thailand and 21 in Indonesia) can only be targeted based on age, gender, and location. With interest and custom 1st party audiences now excluding minors, this means that when trying to reach young people on Facebook or Instagram we are often forced to target all teens in a specific area or none at all.
“Wavo Labs found that broad targeting of U18 users tends to lead to substantially lower than average View Rates and Click Through Rates.”
Execution
While broadly targeting U18 users can drive a high reach and low cost per thousand impressions (CPM), our Wavo Labs case study found that these audiences tend to lead to substantially lower than average View Rates and Click Through Rates when compared to custom audiences and interest targeting (i.e. Core fans, lookalikes, detailed targeting).
These privacy updates also exclude younger users from retargeting audiences once they’ve engaged with an ad, preventing advertisers from reliably graduating them past the awareness stage of the marketing funnel.
Additionally, with the rise of newer social media platforms, it's also important to consider the user demographics of Facebook and Instagram. Facebook may have been the world’s most active social media platform as of April 2022, but its median age skews older, with over 70% of its users aged 25+ and only about 6% of its total ad audience aged 13-17. Similarly, 60% of Instagram users are 25+ and around 9% of users are aged 13-17.
While 6% of Facebook’s nearly 3-billion monthly active user base is still a huge number of people, you may be better served targeting ads to younger users on platforms like Snapchat or TikTok where the under 18 audience is featured more prominently. Over 60% of Snapchat's audience is under 25, with about 20% of users under the age of 18, and for TikTok approximately 67% of users are under 25 with around 27% of users under the age of 18.
Importantly, on platforms like Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube we still have the ability to define targeting for young users on these platforms beyond age, gender, and location. Marketers are enabled to not only target but also retarget users whose interest and in-app behavior closely aligns with the content being advertised. The ability to build re-addressable audiences of young music lovers makes these platforms our preferred strategy to reach the U18 audiences.
“If your target audience skews young, you’re likely better off advertising on platforms like Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube where the user demographics are younger and you have the ability to target and retarget users beyond simple age, gender, and location information.”
Key Takeaways
If advertising on Facebook and/or Instagram, focus targeting on users aged 18+ with more defined targeting such as core fans, lookalikes, and detailed targeting. We only recommend targeting under-18 users on these platforms if your core audience is younger than 18 and/or if your campaign has a broad awareness goal.
If your target audience skews young, you’re likely better off advertising on platforms like Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube where the user demographics are younger and you have the ability to target and retarget users beyond simple age, gender, and location information.
Written by Morgan Nurmi, Ad Operations Coordinator at Wavo
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