I Found A BETTER Way To Do Meta Ads Targeting in 2026

0:00Most Facebook advertisers now leave targeting entirely up to Meta. For some, that works pretty well. For others, not so much. The problem is that when advertisers try and take back manual control, performance often gets even worse. But, there's good news. There's a way to give Meta the flexibility it wants while still influencing who sees your ads. In other words, you get the best of both worlds. In this video, I'm

0:20going to show you exactly how to do it. So, the feature that allows you to do what I just described is called value rules. And with value rules, you're able to optimize for different demographics within your target audience. So, instead of just saying to Meta, "Go and get me as many conversions as possible, as many leads or sales as possible, or even get me as much value as possible optimizing

0:39for the highest return on ad spend." Instead, you can say to Meta, "I would rather you place a priority on these people, this group, this demographic within my overall target audience because I know they are more valuable to my business." So, I'll give you some examples, right? So, you might have calculated that people within a certain

0:59location are more valuable than others. Let's say you're advertising in the whole of the UK, but you know that people within London are more likely to come back and buy again. They're more likely to stick around for longer on your subscription product or your recurring billing, whatever it is. And therefore, you are willing to pay more to acquire conversions from London as opposed to the rest of the UK in this instance. You could do the same for

1:21people over or under a certain age. We've calculated that amongst our customer base, anyone between this age and this age is more valuable to our business. And you could do the same with gender. And actually, there's a business that I've been consulting with for a number of years. And when value rules came out, it was absolutely perfect for them and solved the issue that they had had from just going with open or broad targeting. And that it was a business, jewelry business, and sold primarily women's jewelry. And they found that when they just ran their ads on Meta to all audiences, a lot of their ads were

1:50served to men. Now, men would buy this women's jewelry primarily as gifts. Uh but what this business found was that Meta would think, "Great, this is an audience that we can target that generates conversions. We're optimizing." Meta thinks it's doing the right thing. But this business found that if a man was buying uh this women's jewelry as a gift, they were unlikely to become repeat customers. So, their customer lifetime value was significantly lower than if they generated a sale from a woman who was

2:16more likely to be buying it for herself. So, they were able to use value rules to say, "Increase the bid for women. They are more valuable to our business over their lifetime." And that's something that Meta wouldn't otherwise have visibility over because if you think about attribution windows, let's say a 7-day click attribution window, um anything any conversions that take place beyond that typically aren't going to be registered by Meta. So, if Meta's optimizing for as many purchases as possible or even the highest value, the highest return on ad spend possible, they're going to optimize within that 7-day window. They're not able to factor in the lifetime value. So, instances

2:54like that, you as an advertiser are able to step in and say, "Keep the broad open targeting. I want you to have the flexibility to go out and find people um that are most likely to convert." Meta's really good at that. System's really sophisticated doing that. But also, please factor in this other bit of information because I know that these people are worth more to my business over the long run than these people, and I want you to factor in to your bidding strategy." So, let me show you how to create a value rule. So, to demonstrate

3:18this, I'm in an example Meta ad account. I'm in Ads Manager at the campaign level. And I want to go ahead and go to advertising settings. And then under your business, we've got value rules. I think just about every Meta ad account now has this value rules option. Uh it was introduced a little while ago, and it's been uh it's been steadily rolled out to ad accounts. And I haven't checked it I haven't seen it not be available in that account in a while. If you don't have it here, um then you don't have it yet. And I'm sure you'll get it very soon. Right. [snorts] So,

3:45we'll go ahead and click on value rules, and then we want to go ahead and click on create a rule set. Now, it's really interesting this pop-up here. Meta's kind of got a warning, and something we should quickly discuss at this stage. So, quickly explain what value rules are, right? Reach your preferred audiences using value rules. Increase your bid on audiences that are worth more to your business. Um we've already discussed this. It's exactly what value rules is designed to do. They've got some extra information here, which is interesting. Get more of the outcomes you want. So, focus your budget on audiences using age, gender, location,

4:09etc. Um optimize for all types of goals. See better results with a single ad set. It's one of the selling points from Meta's standpoint uh point of view of value rules. Instead of having different ad sets targeting different um audiences, you can consolidate down into one ad set, which we know is often the right way to go anyway. Consolidation is great. More conversion data in the one ad set, better learning, better

4:29optimization. Uh good things happening. But, we do have this part at the bottom. I understand my overall cost per result may increase when using value rules. And that is something that we should state up front. If you are going to mess with Meta's optimization system, their delivery system, that would otherwise be trying to get you the lowest cost per conversion possible or as many conversions as possible for your budget, anything you do to disrupt that may increase your overall cost per conversion. Now, given some of the examples we discussed a minute ago, that may well be worth it. If being more aggressive and targeting women in the jewelry business example

5:07means that our overall cost per purchase goes up by 10%, but women on average are worth 2.4 times what men are, that's a great trade. Over their lifetime, you'd rather acquire more of those customers. So, just be aware that this may well happen if you go and implement it, but it might still that might be a trade-off that you're willing to make cuz it's overall better for your business. So, let's go ahead and click on create a

5:30rule set. Quick one before we continue. If you're running Meta ads and you'd like me to take a look at your actual ad account and tell you what I would change, test, or scale, I've built something called the Ben Heath Inner Circle. Inside, you get direct access to me for less than $60 per live session, where you can join, ask me questions, and even share your ad account for live feedback. And these sessions are scheduled across multiple time zones, so you can join from wherever you are in the world. So, if you're dealing with performance dropping, creative's not working, or you're unsure how to scale, you can bring it to a live session, and

6:00we'll go through it together. If you want to check it out, there's a link in the video description. Let's get back to the video. So, from within here, we need to select criteria. So, if I click on this uh drop-down, we can see the options. And I've already mentioned a few of them. I mentioned age, gender, and location. But we've got other options here. Things like conversion location is quite an interesting um option. So, if I click on this and then select the options here, uh let's say we're running a lead-based campaign. We could say to Meta, "Look, we know that leads generated via our website, via our

6:26landing page, um they're more valuable. They're more likely to convert." Let's say, again, data that Meta might not have any visibility over than people who become leads via instant forms. Therefore, um we'll select website, and we can increase the bid um etc. I'll get to that bit in a second. Uh we've also got some other options. Um so, we've got device. So, choose between desktop or mobile. Again, you might say uh leads generated via desktop are more valuable than mobile. Willing to pay more for those. Uh mobile operating system, iOS versus Android. A lot of businesses say that iOS-based customers are more valuable than Android-based customers. Um we've also got placement

7:01as well. So, you might have the data to show that um for example, if I click in here, that Facebook feed uh conversions are more valuable to your business than those from the Audience Network. So, you could say, "Look, I'm willing to bid more for these." Or uh I'm willing You can select Audience Network and do the opposite and

7:18say, "I want to bid less." All right? So, a lot of options to play with. Um let's use gender as a as a as a classic example cuz I've already talked about that. So, let's say women. By the way, you can add other criteria. So, we've got one criterion here. We could say women and then also add in say an age criteria. So, you can add in uh two variables. You can say women over the age of 45, for example, if that was what you'd found to be particularly valuable for your business, customers in that category. And then we've got options here where we've got increase bid or

7:44decrease bid by. That's why I just mentioned the Audience Network. Instead of increasing bid for all the others, the Audience Network would be typically seen as a lower quality placement option. You can then say decrease the bid um on uh Audience Network. But in this case, like we're talking about before with the um jewelry business example, women are worth significantly conversions from women are worth significantly more on average over their lifetime than uh conversions generated by from men. So, we're going to increase the bid by and then select your percentage. Let's go with 80% in here as an example. Um and then we could go give

8:17the rule a name. So, we could say women plus 80%. Just something so that when you create multiple rules, you can um easily see which ones which and apply them to your ad set, which I'll show you how to do in a second. You can see we've got rules, one out of 10. You can add up to 10 rules. And you can have different rules that do um different things. So, you can have one for uh gender, like this case. We could have a different one for age. We could have a different one for conversion location. So, you can have multiple rules going. So, what do

8:45we have here? Let's call this women plus uh 80%. And then we go ahead and click create. So, that is now our rule set. Just because we've created it in here does not mean that it's applied to our campaigns. We still need to specifically say we want to use these in the ad sets uh that we want to apply to. Which is great cuz it means you could have different rules applying to different campaigns, different ad sets. And sometimes you might not want to apply any any value rules um to certain ad sets. And that's if you really know your data and you know, "Okay, we know that

9:16women are more valuable than men for this product range that we're advertising in this campaign, but that's not true with this other product range." Um so, you can get quite specific with it, be quite sophisticated. So, to get the value rule to actually apply, um let me show you how you do that. If I just create a quick example, I'll do use a leads campaign, but value rules, like many Meta ads features, will apply to other campaign objectives as well. Um then I jump to the ad set level. That's where we apply our value rules. But I scroll down, and then we get to this value rule section. It says, "Apply an

9:43existing value rule set." I can go ahead and click apply, um but we can get more specific. So, if I click in here, um we can, you know, decide whether or not to apply a rule set. Uh women plus 80% is what we've used, but we could Had we created other rules, we could select a different one depending on what it is that you want to do. Now, once you publish this ad set, this value rule will apply to this ad set and Meta will bid 80% more for a in this case a lead cuz it's a lead campaign, but you could have it set up for sales campaign as

10:12well for a conversion from women as opposed to men. Um and the performance and the ad impression distribution of this ad set versus the equivalent without a value rule is going to be significantly different because an 80% uplift in bid is quite significant. Hyros is the best tracking and attribution software for Meta ads. It's the software all the big players in this industry use including myself. I use it to track results for my own ads as well as all my organic results as well. So, if someone books a call for our done-for-you services, for example, I can see exactly where that person came from with a lot of accuracy. That allows

10:45me to make better decisions for my marketing and my business. Hyros has been able to track that from our ad spend in this campaign, we've generated 96,000 pounds. But, 58,000 pounds of that was not reported by Meta. So, if I was just looking at my data within my Meta ad account, I might come to the conclusion that this campaign is doing okay, but in reality, this campaign is doing a lot lot better. Now, this is a relatively extreme example because of the nature of our business. So, most of our products services have a recurring billing elements. Meta might be able to see what we make initially from our ad

11:17spend on that initial transaction, but not those subsequent payments. That's why it it shows the importance here of being able to accurately see what did we actually get from our ad spend in order to be able to make better decisions and optimize correctly. So, if you want to improve the performance of your ad campaigns without having to touch your

11:32ads, go ahead and sign up to Hyros. There is a link in the video description. And value rules represent a really big shift in Meta ads targeting. You know, we had the really old-school way of doing things which used to be really specific, just target very specific interests or lookalikes in lots of different ad sets. Then we moved away from that cuz most advertisers saw better results with open or broad targeting, just letting Meta work it out. And now we've got this hybrid now we can benefit from open targeting, letting Meta find the best possible prospects to put ads in front of, but we can have an influence over it and we can

12:03give Meta information and context that it otherwise wouldn't have. Meta is not able to factor in differing lifetime customer values because they have attribution windows. They can only track conversions that take place relatively short time period after someone's interacted with your ad. I mean, 7 days at a maximum, but could be 1 day if it's engaged through or or view-through conversion, right? Um Meta also doesn't have visibility over refund rates. Now, you might take a look at your data and work out that people on buying on Android devices have a much higher refund rate than people buying on iOS devices. So, you could create a value rule around device type. You could

12:40work out that um people under 35 are far more likely to refund than people over 35 depending on what you sell. And then again, you can use a value rule to say, we want more customers 35 and over, less 35 and under. Meta often doesn't have visibility over your conversion rate from lead to client. Now, you can set that up so it's tracked and the the conversion lead data is imported into ad account, but most Meta advertisers don't do that. Can be somewhat tricky to do to get that set up with your CRM, much easier to create a value rule if you know that people in a certain location,

13:11certain demographic, whatever it happens to be are more likely to convert from lead to client. And these are all things that have a big impact on your business and the profitability of your marketing of your advertising. And if Meta doesn't have visibility over it, they won't be able to factor that in to optimizing your campaigns, but things like refund rates, lifetime values, conversion rates are hugely important. You can give Meta that information by introducing value rules and and it's likely to improve your campaign when done right and improve your results significantly when done right. Now, in order to do this, of course, you need to know your numbers and you need to know

13:47the data. Like I when I went through the example, I increased the bid by 80% when it came to targeting women and getting conversions from them as opposed to men. Now, in order to work out by what percentage you need to increase or decrease your bid, you need to know in real numbers how much more valuable is

14:03that demographic than a different one. And in your CRM, you should be able to see that. And actually, I speak to a lot of advertisers where this data exists. It's in a combination of their CRM, their ad account, maybe third-party tracking software if they use it, and they just need to take the time to just sit down for 90 minutes, 2 hours, go through it all, and work out so often advertisers will do that cuz I talk about this all the time and I have lots of Q&A calls and I say, go ahead and do this. And so often someone will come back to me and go, I had no idea

14:32that such and such demographic or people in this location, they're worth way more to our business. Like I can it's right there in the CRM. They're worth so much more valuable over their lifetime. I had no idea. And that's brilliant cuz then you can come in and you can create a value rule to reflect that. You may also decide to change your marketing messaging, so the copy in your ads, the messaging in your creative to more specifically target those people. Let's say, you know what, we're really going to target 35-pluses because underneath that, we just hardly make any money. They give us all the headaches and over that, they're they're

15:03significantly more valuable. As as an example. So, you really need to know your numbers. You need to know you need to be able to spot the commonalities between the different groups within your customer base, who is more valuable, who can you serve better, and then reflect that in your value rules. Knowing your numbers is useful anyway, but definitely a step you need to take before you dive in and set this up. And whilst we're on the topic of targeting, I have completely changed my retargeting strategy recently. And I demonstrate it

15:28in a lot of detail in this video here. Post Andromeda recommended campaign structure and the way of doing things has changed. Retargeting has had to change because of it. So, if you haven't already, go ahead and give this a watch.